


Sand and Salt

by ShastaFirecracker



Series: Scars verse [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Bunker Fluff, Castiel Goes Shopping, Castiel Meets Charlie Bradbury, Castiel in the Bunker, Charlie Ships It, Domestic Fluff, First Time, Human Castiel, M/M, Sam Ships It, Season 9 AU, We Can Have Nice Things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-08
Updated: 2015-04-08
Packaged: 2018-03-21 23:27:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3707381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShastaFirecracker/pseuds/ShastaFirecracker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cas makes it to the bunker, but as the weeks pass it becomes apparent that he isn't dealing as well with being human as the brothers would like. Sam decides they should take Cas for a day out on the town, exploring humanity from a more touristy angle to show him that biology isn't all that bad. Meanwhile Charlie does everything in her power to play matchmaker, and Dean isn't as oblivious as she thinks. (Season 9 AU where Sam is healed without possession and Cas is hurt but not killed by April.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sand and Salt

_“I believe that, before all else, I’m a human being, no less than you – or anyway, I ought to try to become one.”_  
\- Henrick Ibsen, _A Doll’s House_

 

“Do you think Cas is losing weight?”

At Sam's murmured question, Dean looks up from his book. Cas is two tables away in the huge library, meticulously transcribing some moldy old scroll onto a yellow legal pad.

Dean chews on the inside of his lip. “Dunno,” he mutters back. But he does know; he can see it, the way the threadbare gray t-shirt doesn't cling in the same places it did, the new shadows in Cas' face. “Yeah,” he says.

Sam's frown deepens. Cas is oblivious, absorbed in his self-assigned translation work.

It's been nearly three weeks since Cas moved into the bunker – three weeks since they'd found him tied to a desk chair and about to get stabbed in the heart by a reaper. His wounds have nearly healed, finally. But while the cuts and scrapes of torture might scab over, Dean knows Cas is still suffering from the mental blow of how close he came to losing this fragile, mortal life, the only tiny shred of existence he has left.

“D'you think he's eating enough?” Sam murmurs after a few minutes.

“He eats the same shit we do,” Dean says, trying to focus on research. But it's not happening, and he sighs, closes his book with a quiet thunk. “What's the deal, Sam?”

Sam shakes his head. “Do you actually see him eat, though?”

Dean furrows his brow at his brother. “Of course,” he says. “We all had the same spaghetti last -”

“I don't mean when we eat together,” Sam interrupts. “Like, between those times, do you see him having a snack or, like, a sandwich, or a soda? Does he eat breakfast? He's usually up first.”

Dean gives Sam a faint eyeroll. “What's with the sudden mother henning? Cas is an adult – whatever-he-is, I'm sure he's taking care of himself. He seems to've figured out shaving on his own,” he adds generously, but doesn't add that after the first few times he'd seen Cas's sadly abused, nicked, razor-burned chin, he'd stepped in to explain shaving cream and lotion. (And after Cas started interrogating him, also where exactly deodorant is supposed to go, how often to brush one's teeth, whether or not to swallow mouthwash, how to use a cotton swab to clean ears, the correct order of usage of soap, shampoo, and conditioner, how to deal with a hangnail, and as a followup to the former, an entire half-hour rundown on everything about nail care).

“But what if he doesn't know he should eat more?” Sam mutters.

“C'mon, he knows to eat if he's hungry. He couldn't starve by _accident._ ”

“I dunno, man, he just doesn't look right.”

Dean chews the inside of his cheek. He knows Sam's right.

After a minute, Sam unfolds from his seat. He walks down Cas's way, sticking his hands in his pockets. His attempt to look casual is painful, but Cas doesn't even look up. “Hey, man,” Sam says. “I'm gonna get something to eat, you hungry?”

Cas still doesn't look up.

“Cas?” Sam asks, feigned upbeat expression falling.

Cas jerks his head up. “Oh,” he says. “I didn't realize you were speaking to me.” He glances over at Dean, who quirks an eyebrow.

“Yeah, uh,” says Sam. “So. Hungry?”

Cas' brow furrows; his eyes seem to tighten. “No,” he says stiffly. “But I thank you.” He goes back to the scroll and legal pad, holding his ballpoint too tight.

Sam hovers, looking pained. It's so obvious that he wants to push harder, but he glances at Dean and Dean gives him a little half-shrug. Finally, Sam leaves.

Dean tries to read again, but the research is going right through one eyeball and out the other, and he's not absorbing a damn thing. So he shuts the book, leans back with a sigh, and says the hell with it. He leans back in his chair and stares openly at Cas.

After a minute, he gets up, walks with heavy footfalls down the library, pulls out a chair opposite Cas, and sits. And keeps staring. Hey, if the bastard could do it to him all the time when he was all halo'd-up, Dean has no qualms about getting a little revenge.

Cas finally glances up through his lashes, head still down. Only for an instant. But he stops writing, so Dean knows he's got his attention.

“Can I be of assistance?” Cas asks finally.

“You can cut the bullshit,” Dean says.

“There is no bovine excreta present -”

“And you know what cut the bullshit means, so you can cut that bullshit, too,” Dean says.

Cas looks up properly, with a glare.

“Are you hungry?” Dean asks bluntly.

Cas' expression flickers. He looks down again. “I have consumed adequate sustenance,” he says mulishly.

“That isn't what I asked,” Dean says. “Right now, do you feel any hunger. It starts like an ache right down-” Dean starts to gesture.

“I know what hunger feels like,” Cas snaps.

Sam returns with a couple of ham sandwichs on a plate, cut into quarters. He gravitates to the other two men, pulls out a chair by Dean and puts the plate on the table conspiculously out towards the center, so it's equidistant from Cas as well. He takes a piece of sandwich. “What's up?” he asks, trying to sound casual, mouth full.

Dean kicks his ankle. Sam glares at him. “Cas was just bein' a martyr over here,” Dean says, turning his gaze back to the ex-angel.

Cas draws up. He raises his head sharply, places his pen across his papers and gives Dean a deadly look. “I am no such thing,” he says coolly.

Dean leans forward, puts his forearms on the table. “I ain't canonizing you,” he says. “It means you're putting yourself in discomfort for no damn reason.”

“I understand the idiomatic usage,” Cas says. “But I am doing no such-”

He's interrupted by an audible, gurgling stomach-growl. All three of them fall silent. Pink flushes high in Cas' cheeks. He looks ready to start smiting, if he still could.

“Cas,” Dean says patiently, “eat a sandwich.”

“I have consumed adequate sustenance for the -” Cas starts.

“No, you haven't,” Dean interrupts. “Obviously.”

Sam leans forward, finishing off his sandwich quarter. “Cas,” he says, “what do you mean by adequate?”

Cas looks down at his papers, clearly trying not to glance at the sandwich plate. “I have done significant research into the maintenance of this vessel, now that it's my responsibility,” he says, scowling. “I have allotted the correct caloric intake and scheduled it out so that I won't take more than my share or compromise the physical integrity of this ves-”

“ _Body_ , Cas, it's your body,” Dean says, spreading his hands. “And you _are_ compromising – _whatever_ because you're hungry, man. Right now. Eat when you're hungry, it's like the most basic, human...”

“I am not human,” Cas snaps, looking up. “I am _not human._ I must now behave in human ways to survive but I -”

“Cas,” Sam says, low and sympathetic. Cas' gaze flicks to him. “Look, I can tell you're scared. Does eating freak you out?”

Cas colors again and looks away, and Dean blinks. Dean can't begin to imagine not wanting to eat. Hell, when they'd found Cas he'd been starving – literally. Dean would've expected him to stuff his face at every opportunity, just to not feel that hunger again. That's what Dean did, after all, after his own brushes with real hunger in his childhood.

But Cas wasn't a child. Point of fact, he'd never been a child, even as an angel. He'd just... been. And human kids got years to adjust and develop and grow into their tastes, their metabolisms, a routine of self-regulation.

“Food imparts calories which impart energy,” Cas mutters. “It is inefficient and messy and... biological. And very dull. I find the task onerous. I see no reason to consume more calories than are necessary for...” But his stomach growls again, and he looks down.

“Okay, for one thing,” Sam says patiently, “you're clearly not consuming enough calories, because you're losing a lot of weight. Really fast. That's unhealthy, and it can be dangerous.”

Cas blinks, looking truly bewildered at last. “It was Jimmy Novak's belief that he needed to lose weight,” he says. “Now that I'm responsible for his body in the mortal way, am I not honoring his wishes by abiding by that belief?”

Dean barks out a disbelieving laugh. Sam's face twists up, stifling a similar reaction. “Cas...” Sam says. “A lot of humans think they need to lose weight, or gain weight, or change something about their appearance. It's doesn't necessarily reflect whether they're physically healthy or not. Jimmy might've been anxious about his weight for whatever reason, but from what I've seen...”

Dean waves his hand. “Cas, you've kept Jimmy's meatsuit in that same state for all these years and you're tellin' me you didn't know fit from a hole in the ground?”

“I -” Cas looks between them, bewildered. “I don't know how to judge, I -”

“Jimmy was fine,” Dean says. “Like, dude was pretty ripped. You told me once that he was a runner?”

“Yes,” Cas confirms. “And I have been drawing on my memories of his memories to continue the same practice. It's pleasant,” he adds. “Not like flying, but... I enjoy a certain... rush.”

“That's a runner's high,” Sam says, grinning. “And that's great, man, but uh. That's one reason your calorie count is off. You gotta take in enough to compensate for the energy you spend, and running spends a lot of energy.”

“I have calculated both intake and expenditure,” Cas says coolly, giving Sam a bitchy look.

Sam rubs his hand over his face. “Look.” He sighs. “You're not honoring Jimmy by dropping off like this. And you'll endanger yourself on hunts by being hungry – it can make you dizzy, irritable, lethargic... it's dangerous. You don't have to eat like Dean -”

“Hey,” Dean snaps.

“- or like me,” Sam says, casting Dean a glare. “You eat to your own level of comfort. Okay? You _do not_ have to feel hungry.” This last is low, serious, said while looking Cas in the eye. “It'll mess you up, mentally and emotionally, feeling hungry all the time.”

Cas hesitates. He looks longingly at the sandwich plate. Sam reaches over and pushes it another inch towards him.

Cas sighs, reaches out and takes a square. Instead of eating it, though, he just examines its contents. “It's so tedious, though,” he says, squashing a bit of bread mournfully between thumb and forefinger. “Repetitive. Time-consuming. I'll only be hungry again in a few hours.”

“Dude,” says Dean, flopping back. “That just means you get to eat again, how is that bad? Food is great. Food is delicious. Hell, I wish I could eat more, but even my stomach's got limits.”

Sam fake-gags. Mostly fake.

Cas holds the piece of sandwich and stares it down. “I'm sorry, Dean,” he says, looking up, and he looks so small and lost. “I want to share your passion but... I believe I must be abnormal in that respect, for a human. A foodstuff has occasionally elicited a pleasure response in me, but it fades so quickly, and repeated exposure reduces the response. And while the sensation of hunger is unpleasant, the sensations associated with eating and the – aftermath – are frequently just as unpleasant, if not more so. I admit it becomes difficult to convince myself to go through with the ordeal time after time.”

Sam scratches his jaw, brow furrowed, and reaches out to take another piece of sandwich for himself. He takes a big bite. Cas finally takes a much smaller bite of his own piece, and sighs.

Dean's boggled, personally. Okay, so... he gets that Cas hasn't ever had to, you know. Digest. And that's gonna be rough to get used to, sure. But eating itself? Dean loves eating. He loves food. Cayenne heat in the back of his throat, sour gummy candy making his jaw tingle, maple-sweet, buttery, fluffy pancakes... hot soup loaded with rice and topped with a big pile of crackers on a cold day... the first bite of a hot cheeseburger with fresh cold tomato and the little added crunch and smoke of bacon after some shoulder-paralyzing, butt-numbing 20-hour drive, and, Christ almighty, _pie..._

Now he's made himself hungry just thinking about food. He reaches over and snags his own piece of sandwich.

They eat in uncomfortable silence for a few minutes. Cas makes it through one piece of sandwich but just fidgets with a second. At length, Sam says, “Okay, I think I'm getting the bigger picture here. Cas, mind getting more specific about the – unpleasant stuff?”

Cas frowns. “I was under the impression that it is social taboo to discuss the waste management system of the -”

Sam waves his hand hurriedly. “No, not that, you're just gonna have to learn to live with that. But you said there were things you didn't like _eating,_ specifically.”

Cas hesitates. “I -” He holds up his nibbled-on piece of sandwich. “I suppose, given the centuries of human lore and idiom and emotional shorthand tied up in the making and eating of bread, I thought it would be more appealing. I do know that it comes in many forms, of course, and I've tried a tiny fraction of those, but....” He squishes off a pinch of bread, rubs it between his fingers. “I mean, it's quite... gummy. And there is no particular flavor.”

“Well yeah, it's just bread,” Dean says through a full mouth, frowning at the crust in his hand. “It's about what you put on it.”

Sam purses his lips. “But you were there when humans _started baking._ So you're thinking about... bread from the dawn of man or whatever?” he says to Cas, who nods, looking sheepish. Sam takes Dean's crust (he knows Dean won't eat it anyway) and studies it. “And this is white bread. Like... bread-shaped Elmer's glue. Mass-produced storebought flavorless crap full of preservatives and HFCS. Okay, I'm following. Anything else?”

Cas seems to be warming to the topic. “There was some 'trail mix' in one of the cabinets,” he says, air quoting, “and I was intrigued by the notion of tasting some of the nuts and seeds so many of your proto-human ancestors subsisted on, so I had a handful, but immediately thereafter I began to cough and could not ease the constriction in my throat for several hours.”

Even Dean sits up a little at that one. Sam's eyes widen fractionally. “Dude,” he says, with a flicker of a smile, “you have an allergy.”

Cas stares. “Pardon?”

“You ate something you're allergic to,” Sam says, smile widening. “Some kind of nut, probably. That's always gonna be unpleasant. You're really lucky it wasn't a serious allergy, that can kill you.”

Cas' eyes go wide as saucers.

Sam gestures quickly. “But it's okay, look, we'll – I'll go look at that trail mix, I know the one you mean, and we can figure out the culprit and all you have to do is not eat that again. Tons of humans have allergies. That is totally normal. Okay, keep going...”

Cas finally warms to the topic, soothed by Sam's calm, helpful attentiveness. It turns out that Cas dislikes anything with a rubbery texture, which is why he had been so dismayed about Dean's penchant for gummy candy; that he doesn't care for intense sugar-sweetness, which had dismayed him about... basically the other 90% of Dean's junk food intake; and that he hasn't been drinking nearly enough water, according to Sam's estimate, which accounts for his persistent mild headache and aching sides.

“Dude, Sam drinks water like a sponge,” Dean says, shaking his head. “You don't need gallons a day.”

“Yeah, well, you don't drink enough either,” Sam says, turning on him. “And when your kidneys start to fuck up, I'm not gonna feel bad about saying I told you so.”

Dean scoffs. Cas has been carefully rationing out bottles of water. Sam tells him, “The water out of the tap is fine. Drink all you can stand, literally, seriously.”

When Sam starts on about urine color, Dean makes a disgusted noise and rolls his head back against the chair. Cas nods, eyes wide, clearly taking mental notes. As Sam keeps talking, in fact, he tears off the top page of his legal pad and starts writing real notes.

Finally, Sam gives up the basic nutrition lecture, sighs, and says, “Look, you don't have to count calories unless you just want to. As long as you eat a variety of different things, just eating when you're hungry until you're not hungry anymore is a pretty decent measuring stick. When your body makes demands, smart thing to do is listen. You're a clean slate so try not to pick up bad habits like _never eating a vegetable ever...”_ He turns his steely look onto Dean.

Dean throws his hands up. “I'm still alive,” he says, “and I look like a million bucks, whaddaya want from me?”

Sam looks at Cas. “Dean is _not_ a role model,” he says.

Cas looks between them, expression muddled. Amused, a little, but also torn.

“Sam,” he says, fiddling with his pen and looking at his yellow pages covered with neat, tight script. “I appreciate these guidelines but I – my time spent attempting to fare for myself showed me first and foremost that there is no chance of survival in modern human civilization without money. I had never before been aware of the financial strain it must be to maintain a hale and healthy adult vessel.” He shakes his head. “Body. The only contribution I can make is in the form of my skills, which are limited now to only the body of knowledge I carry, and I don't want to -”

Sam raises his hands. “Hold up, stop right there. If you're suggesting that we can't afford to feed you, that is the stupidest thing I've ever heard.”

Cas leans forward. “I've witnessed a great deal of the exchange of goods for currency and I understand how it works,” he says, heated. “You and Dean pay an enormous sum of money for the consumable goods you require to live, and this” he gestures at himself “- _body_ adds a third again more expenditure to -”

Dean bangs his hand on the table. “Cas, would you – you're killing me, man, don't you understand that we have all the money we need because we _steal it?_ Hunting don't come with a salary!”

Cas twists the pen in his hands hard, looking torn. “I do understand,” he says quietly. “The failure of the general populus to appreciate those who protect them from evil, it... I suppose it reminds me of... Heaven and earth. Most humans wouldn't believe in the existence of hunters any more than most hunters once believed in the existence of angels. And yet you still love humanity, and guard them...” He trails off, looks at the table. “You guard them with everything you have, you love them above yourselves, and you get nothing in return.”

There's a long, awkward silence.

At length, Sam says, “Well, we're – this is your return. Okay? Everything we can provide is yours. We...” He looks at his hands, gives a rueful, humorless little laugh. “We save the world. I mean, we're the ones who put it in danger half the time, but we do save it. I've never felt bad about taking what we need to live. The people we steal from might not know it's an exchange, but... I think it's even, karmically speaking.” Sam picks at a cuticle, not meeting Cas' eyes. “And you're part of us, so you're on the balance too. You don't owe us anything just for food and shelter, okay? You don't owe anyone anything.”

Cas blinks at the table for a while, then looks up at Sam. “I owe you gratitude,” he says seriously.

Sam gives an uncomfortable laugh. “I, uh. Sure. I mean, you don't, but... thanks.”

Dean clears his throat. This is getting chick-flicky, and if he's honest with himself, too real for comfort. “Yeah, yeah,” he says, tone going for joking, “Enough with the hug-n-cry.”

Sam snorts and Cas blinks owlishly at Dean.

Dean shifts in his seat, feeling uncomfortably like he's got to contribute something meaningful or he'll have fucked up the moment. He hates that feeling. “But uh, yeah, Cas. What Sam said.” He chews the inside of his lip. “We want you to live by Winchester rules, not the rest of the world's. Think about morals and shit after you take care of yourself, okay?”

Cas' lips twitch in a tiny smile. He looks down again, but his grip isn't so tight on the pen and his shoulders are more relaxed. Dean considers it a victory.

Sam shifts and puts his hands palm down on the table in a sort of 'that's settled, deal done' gesture. “Right,” he says, a little too loud. “So, Cas.” Cas looks at him. Sam meets his gaze and grins. “Finish your sandwich. Tomorrow, we're going grocery shopping.”

-

It ends up being a hell of a lot more than grocery shopping.

It occurs to Dean that this might have happened earlier if Sam had happened to be the one to give Cas the big ol' personal hygiene lecture. Dean thinks he was a decent advisor on that front, but as soon as he'd left Cas to his own devices, he hadn't thought about it again except to laugh at the memory. If it'd been Sam, though, it would've got his lawyer-brain kicked into high gear – the part of Sam that makes him so good at research and interviews, the part that just keeps asking _so many damn questions._ (It's also the part that made Sam an obnoxious little brat to raise, so Dean can't help that he associates the trait with being a snot-nosed rugrat, rather than with being an incisively curious and sharp-witted adult.)

What's happened, as far as Dean can tell, is this: Sam has had a belated brick-over-the-head epiphany that Cas _is human now_ and he's gotten completely lost in a flood of existential 'what makes a human human? what things to humans learn that we don't even know we learn?' questions, and now he's adopted Cas as his social experiment-slash-science project. Or maybe it's not a science project, maybe it's a personality makeover project like happens in those shitty pop movies full of teenaged cheerleaders. Either way, Sam's taken it on himself to Teach Cas How To Be Human, and Dean is as entertained by the whole prospect as Cas is mortified.

When Kevin emerged from his self-imposed isolation for a late dinner, he'd been greeted in the kitchen by the sight of Sam making Cas cry while Dean watched and laughed. Well, okay, Cas didn't actually _cry._ Sam had gathered samples of all the things in the offending bag of trail mix, plus several other foods, and set up an impromptu skin prick test. He'd made Cas hold out his arms while Sam drew a bunch of lines and dots in gel pen, labeling each one in tiny print. Then he'd gotten a sterile syringe out of their first aid hoard and started sticking Cas with it, pressing various crushed nuts and cut bits of vegetables to the punctures.

Personally, Dean wanted to know how the hell Sam knew how to do an allergen test in the first place. Sam just muttered a complaint that they didn't have anything to use for a control.

Kevin made himself a sandwich and joined in on Dean's entertainment while Cas' eyes watered at the abuse to his arms and then, later, with the awful desire to scratch the itchy spots that rose up all red and angry around some of the pricks.

Sam examined his notes. “Not peanuts!” he'd declared. “That's good, that would be a huge pain in the ass.”

The final verdict is: raw carrot, which is likely a false positive since Cas belligerently eats a carrot stick in front of Sam to prove that it isn't a problem, and almonds and sesame.

“No sesame-seed buns on burgers,” Sam says, “so no Burger King for you.” Dean boos loudly while Kevin snickers. Cas glares at them all.

So Sam's the one who wakes them all up way too early the next morning, and it's Sam who drives them to Topeka, drumming much too eagerly along to the oldies blaring from some local radio station. Kevin's come along, too, finally convinced that he could use a break from the head-pounding, eye-straining business of prophecy. The Impala is actually full of people for once – well, full of friends and family out to have fun, not full of victims, bodies, or enemies – and Dean has to admit he loves it when that happens. Dean pretends out loud that Sam roped him into this against his will, but the truth is, he wouldn't have missed it for anything.

Cas has seemed nervous since the moment he saw Sam this morning – which was first thing, bright and early. Sam declared last night that he intended to monitor Castiel's eating for a while, a few days at least, to give advice and get him on a more comfortable routine. Cas agreed, though Dean could tell it unnerved him to be observed.

“Don't let him go all personal trainer on you,” Dean told Cas quietly over breakfast, while Sam was rummaging in a cabinet. “You don't have to do something just 'cause he _'advises'_ it. You just do what you're comfortable with.”

Cas nodded, poking his spoon into his bowl of cereal. It'd turned out that he hasn't been eating breakfast after all. He'd told them the thought of food so early makes him feel ill. Sam sighed and pointedly asked if not eating in the morning only makes him feel more ill later. Cas grimaced but didn't argue. Dean had patted his shoulder and assured him that it was normal not to be a morning person, and Sam had glared.

“Everyone's different,” Sam had said.

And that seemed to be Sam's mantra for the day. “Everyone's different; let's figure out who you are.” And Dean could get behind that. After his small amount of cereal and large amount of coffee had settled, Cas seemed to get more into the idea, too. On their way out to the car, he'd started mentioning foods he had found particularly intriguing during his millenia of observing humanity.

So Sam drove, because this was his big Plan and Dean was willing to let him captain the boat for a while. He hadn't even told them they were going to Topeka until they were on the road, Dean riding shotgun with Cas and Kevin in the back, now avidly discussing vegetarian and vegan food. Cas seemed fascinated and Dean worried for a minute that Cas might be convinced to join the no-meat cult, but then he thought about Cas' borderline-inappropriate-for-public-places reaction to cheeseburgers and decided that Cas giving up cooked cow was never likely to happen.

Good. Because Dean never wanted to give up watching Cas eat his cooking, back in the bunker. His expression of revelation the first time Dean decided to go all-out and grill steaks (it had smoked up the kitchen like hell but they'd come out perfect) had been one of the most beautiful things Dean had ever seen. Dean replayed it sometimes, preened over it. Only internally, mind. The thought of bragging about his cooking made his stomach turn. He liked doing it but... he wouldn't compare himself to anyone else, anyone professional. He was just okay at it.

But Cas, Cas acted like everything he made was like God saying 'let there be light.' And Dean bites the inside of his cheek, staring out the passenger window of the Impala, glad he's wearing his sunglasses. It's not the same as Cas back in the olden days looking at him like he's the messiah because of some bullshit angel-prophecy bloodline crap. That wasn't a thing Dean had had any control over. But the fact that Cas could look at him like that about something Dean had taught himself and worked hard at and enjoyed as a hobby and did for fun...

Dean sinks a few inches in the seat, pretending to take a nap. It's another couple hours to Topeka and his face is burning.

Dean closes his eyes while Cas and Kevin talk and Sam hums, letting himself be lulled by road noise and the gentle rumble of tires over asphalt. Maybe he will take a nap. He hadn't realized that Cas had pretty much just been eating his cooking, looking at him like that, and then hardly eating anything else at all. Because everything else was terrible in comparison? Dean's face gets even redder and he tucks his chin to his chest. Yeah, he's gonna take a real nap, just to stop thinking about this.

Before he settles to really go to sleep, he glances up at the rearview and catches blue eyes looking at him in the mirror. He's grateful for the sunglasses because Cas can't see how long Dean stares right back. At length, Cas' gaze turns away.

Dean nestles his head on the seatbelt and closes his eyes. He doesn't see Sam glancing over at him and giving him an exasperated little head-shake.

-

Ten minutes out from Topeka, Sam takes stock of the Impala's passengers. Dean: fast asleep and snoring faintly, mouth open by a fraction, long since slumped diagonally down into his seat. His head remains miraculously in place on the seatbelt. Sam can do that, too; deeply ingrained muscle memory from long, long years of sleeping in the car. In the backseat, Kevin: under headphones for the last hour, but dozing now, too, because the landscape of Kansas isn't exactly thrilling stuff.

Not that you would know that from Castiel's rapt expression as he sits and silently watches the land roll by. He's diagonal from Sam, so Sam can glance back and get a pretty good look – Cas has his chin in his hand, elbow out along the edge of the window, and his face as he watches the scenery whip past is... attentive and fascinated, yes, but the pinching around his eyes also hints at bleakness and regret.

Sam's guts twinge. That isn't how he wanted this day to start. Cas needs distraction, stat.

“Hey, Cas,” Sam says, looking around more overtly so that Cas notices the movement. Cas starts to attention, looking up at Sam. The pinched look clears immediately. Not a deep, dark pit of wallowing, then, which is good. “We're almost there.”

“...Yes.” Cas looks unsure of what response Sam wants.

Sam sighs, reaches into his pocket and tosses his phone back towards Cas. Cas catches it with minimal fumbling. “You know how to use Maps?”

Cas looks pained. Sam remembers that his only previous experience was with burner flip-phones, the unbranded kind you get for 15 bucks at a local general store and load with another ten bucks' worth of minutes. Not exactly smartphones.

So Sam talks him through getting to the app, and Cas settles into familiarity as he realizes it's intuitive and easy. He taps around for a few minutes, looking increasingly pleased.

“There's a saved location in there,” Sam says, passing into Topeka city limits. “Check what exit I need.”

Cas is an excellent navigator, noticing fine details at first glance and remembering every direction after reading them once. When they're nearing downtown, Sam reaches over and smacks Dean on the arm.

Dean jerks upright with a huff and snort. His sunglasses slip down his nose. “What?” he grunts.

“We're here,” Sam says.

Dean pulls the sunglasses off and thumbs into his eyes, glaring out the windows at the town around them. “Lunch?”

Sam laughs. “Neanderthal,” he says, and Dean grumbles, reaching around the seat to jab Kevin awake, too.

“A left at the next intersection,” Cas informs him from the backseat, phone long abandoned in his hands. He's looking curiously around at the other cars, the people, the buildings. “This is quite interesting to experience from the human perspective,” he adds, leaning his face right up against the window to look up at the heights of the buildings around them.

“God,” Dean grunts, “be more of a tourist, why dontcha.”

Cas glares at the back of his seat.

Sam clears his throat. “So,” he says. “You hungry, Cas?”

Cas turns his glare to Sam, but the heat in it falters. He twists his mouth momentarily, then says, grudging, “Yes. I am... hungry.”

“Cool,” Sam says easily, stopping at the red light to wait for the next protected left light. “'Cause this place was highly recommended.”

Dean groans, rolling his shoulders against his seat. “Reading Yelp when you're supposed to be working again, Sammy?”

“Nope,” Sam says, unable to help his grin. “Skyping with a friend, in fact. Who's meeting us for lunch.”

Dean turns a suspicious eye on him.

The light comes on and Sam focuses on driving. He spots the sign for the restaurant just down the street. There's a couple of spaces – parallel, ah christ he hates parking the Impala parallel. Doesn't mean he can't, just that a landyacht like this was never meant for such fine maneuvering. Dean can do it in his sleep, of course, the asshole.

Dean notices the predicament and smirks. “Wake me up in another hour when you need me to take over,” he says.

“Fuck you,” Sam sighs, and tunes Dean out in concentration.

It's not too bad, and Dean's pretense of smirking superiority disintegrates the second he thinks Sam might bump the curb – then he's hovering on the edge of his seat, snapping about scratching up the wheel wells, and Sam's rolling his eyes at him and trying to correct so they're more straight in the spot. When they finally get out, it looks reasonable. No scratches. Dean visibly deflates, pats the car and murmurs something to it while Sam pretends not to notice. Instead he looks over at Cas and Kevin coming around to the sidewalk – and notices Cas giving Dean the soppiest, most disgustingly caring look. Sam rolls his eyes to himself. Christ, those two.

He looks at Kevin instead – who flicks his eyes to Dean and Cas and raises one eyebrow like 'you gotta be kidding me.' Sam laughs.

“Okay, I'll bite, what the hell is this place?” Dean turns away from the car and shoves his hands in his pockets, looking up at the restaurant as they head down the sidewalk. A small sign out front just says _Iberia._

Sam grins. “Tapas.”

“Geseundheit?”

Sam shakes his head and pushes the door open.

It's a little place, the lighting a warm orange but a tad too low for Sam's tastes. Dean frowns at it; he's always insisted he doesn't trust a restaurant where they don't want you to see the food. But it isn't dark, just... cozy. There's a few booths, a lot of tables, a big bar along one wall with a flat-top behind it where one guy is shucking and throwing down spread after spread of chargrilled oysters if you wanted to just drink and share a few dozen on the half-shell with a big party. In fact, there's a big party doing exactly that, men and women in business casual – or possibly business formal, just unbuttoned and rumpled now that some big event is over.

At the end of the bar, Sam spots the vibrantly red hair he was hoping to see. He pulls out his phone, starts typing a text, just as a staff person walks up to them.

“Four?” she asks, grabbing menus.

“Uh,” says Dean, just as Sam holds up a finger and hits send. Sam says, “Five, actually – I'm just getting her attention...”

“Her?” Kevin asks.

Dean sees Sam looking at the bar, follows his gaze, and his eyes widen – surprise first, then unrestrained glee. The figure at the bar digs into her pocket, checks her phone, then jerks a little and whips around on her barstool, looking, then – spotting.

“Charlie!” Dean bellows, and Sam and Kevin both wince.

The slip of a redhead bounces up from her seat and rushes over, drink in one hand, phone in the other. “Dean!” she cries, throwing her arms wide to give him an awkward, trying-not-to-tip-her-glass hug. “Sam!” She does the same to him, and Sam delicately takes the glass away.

“Kinda early?” he says, giving the opaque pink thing a once-over. It's half past noon.

She grabs it back. “Oh come on, it's a virgin daiquiri, it's like a slurpee with aspirations.”

The staff woman tries to cut in. “Um, table or booth...?” She waves them delicately onward, trying to get them out of the doorway.

Charlie and Dean are off like conversational rockets ( _“what the fuck are you doing in Kansas?”_ ) while Sam ushers the group on and Cas and Kevin follow, silent and bemused. They take a curved corner booth; Charlie throws herself in first, wriggles to the middle, then pats the seats to either side, eyebrow raised imperiously. The staff woman can't get a word in edgewise. Sam looks her right in the eye, ignoring the others, and gives her a warm smile.

“Thanks,” he says. “Could we get waters all around, please?”

“Sure thing,” she says, then promises a regular server will be by in a minute.

Somehow Kevin's ended up on the far side of Dean; Sam's next to Charlie and Cas is next to Sam, perched right on the outside edge of the booth seat, looking all apprehensive again. Sam nudges him with an elbow and he starts. “You good?”

Cas' brow furrows. “I am physically well, yes.”

Sam laughs and shakes his head. “Never mind.”

“Oh my god, so hold up, hold up, I gotta meet my new handmaidens,” Charlie's saying, waving for the attention of the whole table. “Introductions, stat!”

Dean beams. “Well, the man of the hour his-very-self, here...” He gestures across the table at Cas.

Charlie goes pop-eyed. “Oh _wow,_ you're Castiel? Like, the actual Castiel?”

Cas looks taken aback. “That is my name...” he says.

“Don't wear it out,” Dean supplies with a laugh.

Charlie turns a glare on Dean. “So when I asked if he was dreamy and you did not confirm or deny, you were lying through your pearly whites,” she accuses, then takes a deep pull of her drink through a neon straw.

Dean flushes and backtracks. “I didn't, what, how would I know?”

“Dude, I'm a lesbian and _I_ know,” she says, bumping him hard in the side.

“Shut up,” Dean grumbles.

Cas is just looking between them, bemused. “'Dreamy' is a positive quality, I'm assuming,” he says.

Charlie snorts a giggle.

“And unrelated to actual dreams?” Cas turns to Sam for confirmation.

“Yeah, Cas,” Sam mutters. “Given what I've seen of Chuck's purple prose, I'm imagining a lot of 'cerulean orbs' and 'husky voice,' am I – Charlie?”

Charlie is giggling hard into her hand now, trying to stifle the laughter. “Oh my god, there's so much of that,” she says. “And so much worse. It's the greatest thing I've ever read.”

Dean gives an annoyed scoff. “Can we stop talking about the damn books one of these days?” he gripes.

“Yeah,” Kevin pipes up, “present prophet here, a little annoyed at getting upstaged by a dead guy all the time.”

Charlie rounds on him, coughing her laughter to a stop. “Right! I'm Charlie Bradbury, techie, hunter, queen.” She sticks out her hand across the table in front of Dean.

“Kevin Tran,” he says, “prophet of the Lord.”

“Well, shit,” says Charlie, and they shake, grinning.

A server with a tray of water glasses shows up, Dean seems to realize he's been had, and he immediately orders a beer. Sam laughs, orders himself a Coke; Charlie's at the end of her daiquiri, gets a frozen margarita (sans alcohol, after Sam glares) to replace it; Kevin wants one with alcohol, Sam refuses – it's a whole thing. At length, the server turns pleading eyes to Cas, ready to get away from this loud, bickering table.

As soon as Cas says the phrase, “I'll have the same...”, Sam reaches over and shooshes him, shaking his shoulder for his attention. Cas gives him a blank, wide-eyed look.

“There is one rule today,” Sam says seriously. “You do not get to copy Dean just to slide under the radar.”

A bright flush appears in Cas' face and he frowns. “I don't...” he says, but it sounds weak to everyone.

Dean's flushed, too, and looking at the woodgrain of the table like it's suddenly very interesting. Charlie looks around among the suddenly awkward faces at the table, intruiged.

“Pick something on your own,” Sam says. “Whatever sounds interesting.”

Cas looks vaguely terrified, but he glances at the menu again. The server looks impatient now, and also like their whole group are a bunch of weirdos. “I would like to try tea,” Cas says, finally, very quiet.

The server jots a relieved note, says “be right back with those,” and hightails it.

Sam slaps Cas' shoulder. “Good,” he says.

“I don't understand the purpose of this exercise, Sam,” Cas mutters. The pink is still high in his cheeks. “In fact, I don't understand the function of the biological response of shame. Why does being singled out make me feel discomfort?”

Sam gives a long sigh and looks at Charlie. “See? This is what I meant.”

“Wow,” she says, and finishes the last of her drink with a rattling suck on her straw.

“What?” Cas asks curtly, looking discomfited.

“Look, I'm sorry I put you on the spot,” Sam says. “But part of this problem you've got is that the only things you ever get exposed to are what we expose you to. So the point of this exercise is just... expanding your horizons, man. Try things at random and follow leads where you find them. Think of it like research.”

Hesitantly, Cas nods.

“I kinda explained Cas' deal to Charlie last night,” Sam says, glancing over at Dean and Kevin now. “Tapas were her idea.”

“Again,” Dean says, “gesheundeit.”

“Small plates, dude,” Charlie says with a dramatic eyeroll. “Like, get lots and lots of things, then share 'em around the whole table?”

Dean makes a face. “I like a slab of cow all to myself, thanks.”

“Well, this isn't for you,” Sam says sharply, “so shut your trap.”

Thankfully, Dean just smirks instead of bristling. “Whoa there, hoss, I'm not complaining. So what is this, like, the hoity-toity, two peas and a fish eyeball makes one plate kinda place?”

“Eugh,” says Charlie. “No way. I've been here before. The small plates aren't really that small, and trust me, if you like cured pig, that's like two-thirds of what they do.” She snorts, then flips up her menu and glances over it. “There's only eight small plates, you want to just get all of them? Five of us, some of us eating for two or three?” She eyes Sam up and down.

“Ha ha,” he deadpans. “Yeah, sure, we're hungry.”

“And then we can order the entire dessert menu,” Dean says.

“Don't be a dick...”

“Dude,” Dean says, looking Sam dead in the eye. “You _can't_ think I'm kidding. I am not kidding.”

Sam groans. “This may have been a bad idea,” he sighs.

They end up running with Charlie's idea and ordering nearly the whole first half of the menu. Sam would normally balk at the decadence and especially at the cost, but he loaded his hidden inside-seam pocket with hundred-dollar bills for this trip. Almost all their on-hand cash. It's fine; it's been a while since he whipped up some new fake credit cards and maxed out their cash withdrawal limits, anyway. Hell, he could probably ask Charlie for help and get a few grand even easier, swiped out from under some CEO's nose. This trip is not for thinking about waste or excess. This trip is about laying an array of human experiences out in front of Castiel and letting him make his own choices for a while. (And, if Sam's honest, the fact that Dean's gonna be forced into some new experiences too is just the frosting on the cake.)

The food takes three trays and two people to bring out. Sam tries to be nice to their server over the noise of Dean, Charlie and Kevin chattering away, and internally vows to leave a crazy big tip.

The plates are like... more than a nutritionally-sound serving should probably be, but significantly less than the kind of servings Dean eats. Sam's concern that they can't eat all of it is demolished within five minutes, and once they start passing plates around, he stops caring about logistics and just focuses on having fun.

Sharing everything is good in theory; in practice, some things fall out predictably, like Dean pulling the New York strip plate over to himself and only sharing small bits for the others to taste, or Sam ending up being the only one interested in the braised asparagus. He does dutifully pass Cas a spear, with sauce and rice and all, and Cas dutifully chews it... trying all the while not to make a terrible, terrible face. Sam just about doubles over with laughter at the sight. Cas hides behind a napkin, scrunching his nose and coughing.

“That is a truly foul vegetable,” Cas says at length, taking a drink of his iced tea. He loves the tea. Sam's so happy that Cas discovered a thing he liked all on his own. The feeling is kind of patronizing, he supposes, so he keeps it to himself, but it is exactly the result he was hoping for.

“Right?” Dean's saying. “Sam is a fuckin' weirdo for liking it. And it makes your piss smell funky.”

Cas makes a disbelieving face. “How did humans even discover it was edible?” he asks.

“All right, enough,” Sam grouses, eating his damn asparagus with pride.

There's grilled calamari, which Cas doesn't even want to try because Kevin declares it to be rubbery and Cas balks at the idea of anything that might squeak between his teeth. Sam concedes him that, because he's already tried chewy things and knows he doesn't like them. Sam's only insisting that Cas try _new_ things. So when they come to the plate of bacon-wrapped, blue cheese-stuffed dates, Sam's unwilling to let Cas take a pass.

“Half of one,” he says, cutting a piece. “Dean, eat the other half.” Because Dean needs to try something new, too, damn it.

“Gross,” Dean whines, having already polished off the New York strip and so having no red meat to fall back on.

“Bacon covers a multitude of sins,” says Charlie, who's eaten the lion's share of the calamari by now and already declared her willingness to take a bath in the heavenly pepper-cream sauce that came with it.

Cas and Dean eye their brown lumps with distaste, then eat at once. Cas' eyes go a little wide. Dean's don't, but Sam knows from long experience what he looks like when he's trying to pretend he doesn't like something.

“It's quite delicious,” Cas mumbles around his mouthful.

Dean grumbles unintelligibly with defeat.

The two of them end up fighting over the rest of the dates and Sam leaves them to it, stealing the last of the cheese rolls instead. Kevin sneaks a date for himself and Dean nearly stabs him with his fork. Kevin makes chipmunk-cheek faces at him. This group, Sam thinks, is probably not fit to be in civilized public places.

Sam's great triumph is the plate that _only Cas likes._ It's morcilla and mushrooms with toasted sourdough.

“Fungus,” Charlie says with a grimace.

“Sourdough is the nastiest bread,” Dean says. “Bread should not be sour.”

“Do you not understand that that sausage is _made out of blood?”_ Kevin squeaks, watching Cas eat with a look of horror.

Sam nudges Cas. He'd tasted the dish and didn't really like or hate it. Cas is welcome to the rest. “Don't listen to them,” Sam says.

Cas chews contemplatively. “It tastes... wholesome. I have always admired the ways in which humans plumb the depth and breadth of the material universe for inspiration,” he says, looking off into the middle distance. “Fungus and blood and dangerous bacteria, a last resort for survival, the end of a rope, perhaps, and yet humanity sees it not as hopelessness, but as potential and creativity and...” He takes another bite. “Makes something beautiful out of nothing,” he mumbles.

The rest of them sit kind of stunned and don't nag at Cas for his taste preferences again.

Dean's the first to sit back and take stock of the damage they've done. “So,” he says, eyeing what's left of the calamari with distaste. “Dessert.”

“Not the entire menu, Dean,” Sam says.

“There were only five things on that list,” Dean says. “Three of them were pie.” He looks utterly immovable.

“One of 'em was fried cheesecake,” Charlie says, reaching over Dean to stab something from Kevin's plate, to his squawk of indignation. “Come _on.”_

“I did mean to ask,” says Castiel, “why death by chocolate would be a desirable or socially acceptable form of suicide.”

Sam sighs despairingly and flags down the server.

-

Lunch ends up being a two-and-a-half-hour affair. It's the most fun Sam can remember having in... god, he doesn't like to think about it. Outside on the sidewalk, stretching legs stiff from scrunching into the booth, shoulders warm in the sunshine, Sam looks around at his expanded little family and tries to pretend the tightness in his chest is heartburn or something.

Dean and Charlie are groaning, complaining about how full they are. “Pie betrayed me,” Dean moans, leaning back with a grimace.

“That's what happens when you eat _all of it,”_ Sam tells him.

“I've learned my lesson,” Charlie whimpers. “I'm sorry, octopus gods.”

Even Cas looks uncomfortable, one hand pressed to his middle. “I understand 'death by chocolate' as an idiom more intimately than I wished to,” he says weakly.

They reach the Impala. Sam turns to Charlie. “So, did you want to come with for the rest of the day? Might be kinda boring, we're not doing any world-saving. Mostly just shopping.”

“Were you dropped on the head as a child?” Charlie asks, giving him an incredulous look. “I _never_ get to hang with you guys unless the world is ending. I'm stuck to you like glue, baby.”

Her car is off in the hinterlands of some parking garage, so Sam offers her a spot in the backseat. Since the Impala's a boat, three people in the back isn't even cramped. They pile in. Dean insists on taking over driving, won't take no for an answer. Sam catches him mutter something about curbs.

That's fine; it means Sam can navigate and be obtuse about where they're going. Dean grouses, but Sam knows he's always happy with aimless inner-city rambling. He doesn't love it as much as he loves a newly-paved two-lane country road at 3 a.m. in July, but then, that's Dean's idea of heaven (literally, in fact) and that makes it hard to top.

In the back, Charlie interrogates Castiel. “So you're human?” she asks. “Really, mortally... human? That's gotta be rough.”

“Yes,” Cas says stiffly.

“How does that even work, though, I thought your grace was... you.”

“Not exactly,” Cas says. “It is – was – the Word, the animus, the... the...” he sighs, frustrated with language. “This is much easier to express in Enochian,” he complains. “Ke ra shimet. The breath of my father, light, life-death, a pocket in spacetime containing the absence of entropy, energy expressed as consciousness.”

“Oh... kay,” Charlie says, brow pinched. “I didn't... follow any of that.”

Cas sighs. “It was my wings,” he says. “But not my selfhood. If you lost all your senses, you would remain yourself, but the way you interact with the world would change dramatically and in turn that would change you as a person over time. I'm... adjusting.”

Charlie nods. “I can't imagine what that much loss is like,” she says sympathetically.

Cas shifts in his seat, fiddling with the seatbelt. “At the moment, the things I've lost don't bother as much as the things I've had thrust on me.”

“Biology,” Sam supplies from the front seat, checking his phone. “Take this right, Dean.”

“Biological existence is thoroughly offputting,” Cas says flatly. “Pain, hormones, sweat, digestion, excretion, adrenaline, serotonin. Chemicals, emotions. Breathing. Are you not constantly aware of how tedious breathing is? Not to mention how many things that are necessary to carbon-based biology are inherently harmful. Oxygen is a carcinogen, sunlight is deadly radiation. I understand how some might see mortality as a heady drug, but...” He's talked himself back into moroseness, and shakes his head, staring out the window.

“Huh,” says Charlie. “So, I get that it sucks donkey butt, but I think you're wallowing a lot, too.”

Cas looks over at her, disgruntled.

Charlie shrugs. “I get that it's easier to deal with if you're born human,” she says, “and I get that being an angel is probably way easier full stop, but the human experience isn't that bad. If you've got the right people to share it with. And you've always admired humans and been curious about them, right? And that's why Sam wanted you to get out and try things? To find the positive?”

“Yes,” says Cas.

“So, is it working?”

He gives her a faint smile. “I don't know yet,” he says. “But it is definitely preferable to share the experience. With the right people.”

She beams at him. Sam doesn't miss the way Cas' gaze drifts over the back of the driver's seat before he goes back to looking out the window.

After a few minutes, they reach destination number one: a strip mall, kind of yuppie central, with a bunch of department stores scattered along an enormous parking lot.

“Ugh,” Dean says. “Gimme a bottle of Jack so I can play 'do a shot every time you see a popped collar.'”

“You don't have a death wish that bad,” Sam chides. He turns in his seat to look back at Cas. “You've been human for over a month now and you haven't had a damn thing to wear.”

Cas looks down at himself with a frown. “I am clothed,” he says, “so I know that was sarcasm, but you'll need to expound.”

Sam waves at him up and down while Dean finds a parking spot. “I mean you don't have anything of your own,” he says. Cas is wearing one of Dean's oldest pairs of jeans, inseams frayed to cotton-thinness, holes in the knees, permanent mud-stains around the hems; and one of Dean's button-downs, an old green-and-gray plaid, which fits atrociously. The shoulder seams go halfway to his elbows. And if Dean's clothes are kind of baggy on Cas, that's nothing compared to the circus tents Sam's hand-me-downs would be. The poor dude deserves something that fits, something he likes, something he's comfortable in. And Sam has the logical argument prepared, too: “Besides,” he adds, “you lost your old suit and coat, and if you wanna get on the road with us again one of these days, you're gonna need FBI duds.”

Dean grunts. “Now that you mention it, I need some shirts,” he says grudgingly. “Got ectoplasm all over the last clean white shirt I had. Bleached and bleached it, but shit's like the superglue of nasty.”

“Kevin,” Sam adds, rounding on him while he's trying to scoot out of the seat without attracting attention, “you need a new hoodie, dude.”

“It's comfortable,” Kevin says immediately. It's old, dirty, frayed, faded, thin.

“That skank-ass thing needs to be salted and burned before it starts haunting us,” Dean says, yanking out the keys and opening his door.

As soon as they've all piled out, Charlie grabs Castiel by the arm. “Come on, angel,” she says. “We're gonna What Not to Wear this bitch.”

-

They split up and Dean ends up with Kevin.

“Babysitting,” Dean complains, and Kevin punches him in the arm and says “I'm eighteen, asshole!” Dean smirks. Kevin's so easy to bait, it's like having a teenage Sammy around all over again.

Sam, of course, knows Deans's tactics, and glares and tells Dean to behave before he heads off with Charlie and Cas. Cas looks long-suffering and resigned now, but at least that's better than bewildered and sad.

Dean heads into the nearest store, beelines for plain old white shirts and rolls his eyes when Kevin starts skimming clearance racks all slow and picky. Dean's idea of clothes shopping takes ten minutes: he finds an unoffensive pattern, finds his size, grabs three. He drapes his small pile of clothes over his arm and goes over to where Kevin's only finished looking through, like, one rack.

Dean rolls his eyes and goes to pay for his stuff. White, white, white, red cause why not, flannel, flannel, white, pack of black t shirts, pack of black trouser socks: done. Feeb duds set to go for at least another handful of gory hunts, or months if they only have salt 'n burns. He has no idea why other people have to make this so hard.

He finds a chair near the front, sits around and, yeah, babysits, while Kevin browses for what feels like an eternity. Dean props his bag on his leg, his chin on his fist, and promptly takes a pie-overindulgence nap.

Kevin pokes him awake sometime later demanding money. Groggy and with funky nap-taste in his mouth, Dean peels out a couple of hundreds and tells Kevin not to spend it all in one place.

“Uh, dude, do you know what clothes cost?”

Dean registers that the kid's arms are loaded. With a sigh, he yanks his money back from Kevin and hands over one of the last good credit cards instead. “Go nuts, Mr...” He glances at it. “Gerald Eugene Fitzwallace.”

Kevin gives the card a look of distaste but snatches it anyway.

Dean won't begrudge him a new wardrobe. Now that he's really thinking about it, he isn't sure he's seen Kevin wear anything but the same two shirts and one hoodie the whole time he's been in the bunker. Probably needs new shoes, too. God, it's like being a parent. A really irresponsible, financially criminal parent.

Dean fumbles out his phone while Kevin pays. It's been over an hour since they split up, so Dean texts Sam, _how's the makeover goin._

It's a couple minutes before Sam sends back, _I'm in fashion week hell_

_Which store? Kevs done_

_I'll just meet you outside_

So once Kevin's done bankrupting poor fake Mr. Fitzwallace, they head back out into the bright sun of the midafternoon. Dean squints across the parking lot, spots Sam several storefronts away in front of some fancyass menswear boutique Dean wouldn't set foot in on a dare. Dean senses Charlie's hand behind this madness. He sighs, heads over.

Dean gestures at the sign and doesn't even need words for Sam to roll his eyes in agreement. “Designer jeans, apparently,” Sam says. “She's been teaching him nonstop about sewing and stuff, you know, 'cause she makes her own costumes?”

“Better her than me,” says Dean.

Sam hoists an armload of bags. Logos indicate low-end retail and Dean's oddly relieved. What, would he be offended or jealous or something if Cas ends up dressing better than him? Or looking better than him? Or looking good in general? No that's absurd, he just thinks fashion is stupid and 'designer' anything is a scam. Right.

"Got the basics without having to go all Project Runway, at least," Sam says. “No more stealing your pants all the time.”

Dean staunchly ignores his little flare of disappointment. "Cas sick of being Charlie's pet yet?”

“Well, she wanted him to pick things on his own, so she said 'go with your gut' and you know how Cas is with metaphors. That was a whole conversation I didn't need to hear.”

Dean laughs. “How'd he do?”

Sam sighs. “He picked out a lot of plaid and Charlie said we're bad influences on him.”

Dean beams. “That's my boy,” he says. Kevin rolls his eyes.

The shop door in front of them opens with the faint clang of a bell and Charlie sticks her head out. “Dudes,” she says, “gird your loins.”

“Uh, my loins are just fine as they are, thanks,” says Kevin.

“What have you done?” Sam sighs.

Charlie scoffs. “I've done _awesome,_ thank you.” She looks skyward and concedes, “Okay, well, I flashed a bunch of cash at an attendant and said 'make this hobo look like a model' and she about cried from joy. Aaaand...” Grinning, she flashes her palm at Dean. It has a phone number scrawled on it. He gives her a double thumbs up.

“What's he still doing in there, then, getting a manicure?” Sam asks.

She waves impatiently at them. “Chill, young Padawan, he's just changing.”

“Seriously?”

“The attendant threatened to burn his old clothes,” Charlie snickers.

“Hey!” says Dean. “Those're mine!” Not that he ever has any intention of wearing them again.

“Yeah, that's what Cas said,” she says, “so don't worry, they're safe and sound.” She gives him a loaded look that makes him feel shifty and restless.

Charlie casts an exasperated look at Sam. Sam shrugs.

A figure looms behind Charlie, hard to see through the darkened glass storefront. “Charlie,” says Cas' voice, muffled. “You're blocking the egress.”

“Oop,” Charlie says, spinning round. Dean can hear her mutter, “ _Hell_ yes, if that doesn't do it...” as she reaches up for some reason, probably fiddling with Cas' collar.

At last she flings the door open and holds it for Cas all gentlemanly.

“I really don't understand how these are significantly different from any other articles of clothing,” Cas says as he steps out into the sun, squinting.

No, Dean doesn't have a tiny moment of brain-death. Definitely not. He isn't, y'know, grateful for the way his own shopping bag hanging from his crossed arms happens to conveniently cover any incriminating evidence. He definitely doesn't let his crossed arms slide down a few more inches just to be absolutely positive the bag is in a good cover-up position. And he definitely, definitely isn't nigh-fainting with gratefulness that his sunglasses let him give Cas a thorough up-and-down without anyone being any the wiser.

“Damn,” Sam says. Kevin barks out a laugh and jokingly wolf-whistles.

Charlie, beaming wickedly, gives Cas a tiny golf-clap. Then she twirls her finger. Cas just squints at her. “Turn around,” Charlie sighs.

The jeans are dark, the denim is fine-grained, and okay so many there's something to their designer-ness because Dean's never owned a pair of jeans himself that did that kinda justice to his ass. They're belted, not that the jeans need it the way they hug the shit out of Cas' hips, but the belt is a nice chocolatey tooled leather with a bronze-colored buckle that glints dully in the sun. The shirt is a middling shade of charcoal with faint pinstripes. It fits like someone just made it to order. The sleeves are rolled to the elbow and somehow that makes Dean hyperaware of Cas strongly muscled forearms where any number of old Winchester hand-me-downs hadn't.

Charlie turns to Sam and raises her hand. “Right? Right?” Sam laughs and concedes her a high-five (although for Sam it's more of a low-five). Kevin does the same, shaking his head and saying, “Where's my makeover?”

Cas walks away from the shop, off down the sidewalk, and turns and comes back. He twists at the waist, rolls his shoulders. The tucked-in shirt pulls tight across his abdomen, slipping out of his pants by maybe half an inch. “Range of motion hampered,” he mutters when he's next to them again. “I couldn't run. No way to adjust for temperature control. This is terribly impractical.”

Charlie reaches up and slaps him on the arm. “Trust me, it's _totally_ practical for picking up hot dates.” Dean mentally translates that as 'hot chicks' and his guts squirm.

“Sexual attractiveness,” Cas sighs, and did Dean just hallucinate him glancing sidelong at Dean when he says it? “I understand,” Cas says, and he sounds so damn depressed about it that Dean can't take it anymore.

He shifts his bag to the side and reaches out to clap Cas' shoulder. “Don't worry, man, when we get home we'll take your red carpet look on a test run and chicks'll be falling all over you.”

Cas sighs deeply. Dean files it away as his 'emo teen' sigh. He's tempted to laugh. He feels slightly edgy, slightly hysterical. The look Charlie's giving him isn't helping any.

“Okay, runway show over,” Dean says with finality, shifting his bag over his shoulder. “A man can only take so much clothes shopping.” He turns and heads off towards the parked car.

Faintly, he catches Charlie's voice, clearly not meant to be overheard: “Why is this so _hard?”_

-

“Where to?”

Dean twists in the driver's seat to look at the backseat trio and is greeted by the sight of the backs of a bunch of electronics.

“You know this is why they say conversation is dead,” Dean sighs.

Sam holds up his phone triumphantly. “Bookstore,” he says. He had made Cas take the front seat. He'd done it all nonchalantly, but Dean's suspicious of his motives anyway. It means Dean's constantly looking over at Cas' absurdly toned arms and his long-fingered hands folded serenely in his lap. It also means Dean is desperately trying not to make eye contact.

“Damn it,” Charlie says. “I was trying to pull up the directions to Fantasyland.”

Dean nearly chokes. “We're not going – Sam, directions, now.”

The bookstore is in a mall. Seriously, a mall, and as Dean drives he thinks _what are we, a bunch of 90s teenyboppers?_ Meanwhile Charlie, her dreams of introducing an ex-angel to a store full of sex toys cruelly dashed, declares that what Cas needs is a musical education that expands beyond Dean's cassette collection.

“No one needs a musical education beyond classic rock,” Dean complains.

“Yes,” Sam groans, “they really, really do.”

Charlie already has some little gizmo out and hooked to her phone that lets her hijack an unoccupied radio frequency. “Disney!” she says. “Classic in a different way.”

“What happened to driver picks?” Dean bitches.

He glances over at Cas, who hasn't said a word, but he does seem to listen intently when the music starts. He's taking this whole 'daylong teachable moment' thing way too seriously for Dean's taste.

Then the song really registers in Dean's mind. _“Someday... my prince will come...”_ croons out of the speakers.

“Seriously?” Dean says.

“Hm,” says Charlie, poking around on her phone. “Something more recent?” The song changes. Sam and Kevin are chatting about something, the noise making it harder to make out the content, but Dean catches bits: _“...you keep on denyin'... when you gonna own up that you got, got, got it bad... I won't say I'm in lo-o-ove...”_

Charlie tuts. “Maybe not a big enough box office hit, though. How 'bout this?”

_“Shalalalala my oh my, look like the boy too shy, ain't gonna -”_

“Charlie!” Dean snaps. “What the hell!”

_“- go on and kiss the girl -”_

“What?” she says, innocence incarnate. “Sometimes a girl's gotta get her doofy animated love story fix.”

“Damn it, start with a curtain number instead of the sappy shit at least...”

“Hey, I was just trying to...”

Dean and Charlie fall into a comfortable push-and-pull of antagonizing each other and neither of them notice the song ending and changing. Not until Cas leans over and turns the volume way up. His eyes are focused on the radio. The orchestra blares, the percussion is heavy, a woman's lungpower sounds like it's using all the air in a half-mile radius.

_"... took the stars from yours eyes... I made a map... I knew that somehow I could find my way back. Then I heard your heart beating; you were in the darkness, too... so I stayed in the darkness with you."_

Charlie and Dean have fallen silent, and after a few seconds even Sam and Kevin's chitchat drifts to a halt. Cas stares into the middle distance, listening, until the song tinkles to a piano-y end. Then he sighs and turns to look out the window. Some other pop thing starts up.

Dean mutters, "enough of that," turns the volume back down and tunes the station over to something local instead of Charlie's hijacked frequency.

"Sorry," Charlie laughs uncomfortably. "Uh, just, library, shuffle... sorry." She clears her throat and falls silent.

The rest of the drive across town is unaccountably uncomfortable. The soundtrack is mostly terrible local radio commercials for tax filing services and ambulance-chasing lawyers. Cas is staring out the window and up, up, to the sky. Charlie's head is bowed as she furiously does whatever she does on her phone. Kevin props his head on his hand and just pretends to go to sleep, or maybe he really does go to sleep; who knows.

Dean parks outside the bookstore. He'd almost rather stay out here and let the others go in, but he doesn't want to run Baby's tank down just for the A/C and he doesn't want to bake for however long these nerds are gonna take inside. So he goes on in with them, figures he'll look at the magazines, or go out into the mall proper and look for a shoe store, because his insoles are on their last breath. Completely saturating your boots in grave mud every other night doesn't do anything for their longevity.

Cas stops just inside the door, reaching out to ghost a hand barely-there over Dean's upper arm. It's like a tiny static spark. Dean keeps his reaction invisible.

“I'd like to be on my own,” Cas says. “To... shop. I suppose.”

Dean clears his throat. It doesn't escape him that Cas is telling _him_ this when it's been Sam and Charlie who've been all over his case all day. “Yeah, sure,” Dean says. “Meet back here in an hour?”

Cas gives him a grateful look. It's so open, so small, so vulnerable – for a split second. When Charlie comes back to see why they've stopped, his wall of blankness is back up.

Dean gives Cas the cash he didn't give Kevin, waves all his wayward chicks off to explore the hinterlands of capitalism on their own, and he suddenly feels intensely drained. He abandons any notion of a shoe store. Goes over to look at the magazines, but his eyes glaze over and he doesn't even care about this swimsuit edition or that gun expo. He rubs his eyes, wanders off again to find the nearest seating area. It's by the cookbooks.

Nothing better to do, he skims the shelves, picks up a book on charcuterie, thinks pissily that Sam probably thinks he doesn't even know what that is but Dean isn't _ignorant_ just because he likes plain old ground beef, okay. He sits angrily, reads angrily. He's angry and he doesn't know _why_ ; he's exhausted like he's just pulled an all-nighter, where not an hour ago he was humming with energy.

He finds himself reading about how to make blood sausage, as disgusting as it sounds. He thinks about Cas' far-off expression. Remembering... who knows, maybe the first time a caveman ate a mushroom, or the blood spilled across eons and eons of human endeavor, not for the sake of war but for the sake of survival.

“Dean.”

Dean jumps in his seat, having completely zoned out. He looks up, heart pounding, to find that Cas is sitting in the chair across from his, leaning forward slightly and smiling at him. His abrupt appearance is almost just like the old days, when he'd flap into the middle of things with a breath of gale and a whiff of lightning.

“Uh,” Dean says. “Hey. Time already?”

Cas shook his head. “I finished shopping,” he says. “A quiet rest seemed appealing.”

“Yeah.” Dean closes the book he was reading. “I can't take that much constant retail. Maybe a little is fun, but... I run out of steam.”

Cas nods, looking understanding. For the first time, Dean notices that he's clutching a variety of small bags.

“What'd you get?” Dean nods at Cas' hands.

“Oh.” Cas holds up the bags. “I don't know. Odds and ends. It's strange, making the effort not to be practical.” He reaches into one bag, pulls out a couple of small items. Tubes, like for lotion or ( _redacted!_ screeches Dean's brain). “I got you something,” Cas says, fiddling with the tubes and looking nervous. Abruptly he holds out one of them.

Dean takes it without thinking, then looks. It's a fancy bath store hand lotion. Cas doesn't know that unspoken human rule of tearing off price tags before you give gifts, so Dean can clearly see how overpriced it is, but he doesn't care.

“The woman in the store said that it was full of 'vitamin E' and 'nourishing oils',” Cas says, and Dean can hear the air quotes even if he doesn't really make them. “It's good for your hands,” he explains. “ I keep finding that my hands are uncomfortably dry. I had no idea that skin could crack. And I've seen that yours are the same.”

Dean clears his throat. “Yeah, it's the uh. The work. It's rough.”

Cas nods. “The scent reminded me of you.”

The tube says “fireplace smoke.” Dean hesitates, then flips the cap and sniffs. It smells burnt and warm and... well, Dean's inclined to think 'heavenly,' but the ironies there are too heavy for even him to ignore.

“What did you get?” Dean nods at the tube Cas is still holding.

Cas holds it up. It says “autumn air.” “It reminded me of flying,” he says sadly.

Dean takes it, smells it. It smells – clean, crisp. He can't place the actual scent, wants to call it floral, but maybe it's more piney.

Cas looks so faraway. Dean hates the thought of him trying to take care of his roughed-up, breakable human body by covering himself with reminders of a kind of strength he'll never have again. “Maybe you should use my one,” Dean says, without thinking.

Dean accidentally makes eye contact, then can't look away. Cas blinks slowly at him.

“And I wouldn't mind smelling like flying,” Dean says. His heart is, inexplicably, in his throat.

Cas reaches out, carefully takes back the smoke-scented lotion. “That seems appropriate,” he says quietly.

Dean rolls the other tube between his palms, feeling both crushingly embarrassed and weightlessly delighted. Cas doesn't quite meet his eyes again, and Dean can't think of anything else to say that won't dig him deeper into this hole. At length, Cas sits back in his chair and his eyes slip mostly closed, although he continues to turn the lotion over in his hands, and there's the vaguest hint of a smile on his lips.

Dean leaves to pay for the book in his hands. It's stupid, he isn't ever going to make any of the things in it, but he can't seem to let go of it now. It's just a surprisingly interesting read, he tells himself. That's all.

-

Sam can tell something is different when they meet back up. When Sam and Charlie round the corner of a row of bookshelves, it's to the sight of Dean and Cas sitting in adjacent chairs, heads together, talking in low voices. Sam catches sight of Dean smiling like he never does, not these days.

Then Kevin rounds the corner after them and pops the bubble by speaking. “Hey,” he says, flopping into the chair next to Dean's, and the two men stop at once and look up. Cas' look of pleased amusement stays in place, but Dean looks like a deer in the headlights. “What else? I'm kinda beat,” Kevin says.

“I, uh, hey, has it been an hour?” Dean says stupidly.

“More than,” Sam says, sidling closer. _“Someone_ got caught up arguing about the relative merits of the Assassin's Creed games with the guy in Game Stop.” He elbows Charlie. Because of their height difference, his elbow hits her in the shoulder.

“Ow! Come on, that guy was such a douchebro,” Charlie complains. “Those kind of dudes always need three square servings a day of their ass fed to them by a girl gamer. I was doing the world a service.”

“She chewed him up and spat him out,” Kevin says with a grin. “I wish I'd been filming it.”

“We still need groceries...” Sam starts, but interrupts himself with a yawn. He gives Dean a one-shouldered shrug. “It's been a long day already. Want to crash a motel for tonight, get everything else and head back tomorrow?”

Dean blinks, and Sam almost misses the way his eyes flick in Cas' direction. “Uh, sure. Yeah.”

As they gather up their stuff and troop out towards the towering corridors and wide bank of glass doors at the front of the mall, Sam glances over at Charlie. She looks up at him. She gives him a tiny smirk.

“Maybe,” Sam mutters to her.

“Just wait,” Charlie says.

-

They drop Charlie off at her car and all get out of the Impala for a hug orgy. She refuses to let Kevin pass without one, even though they've barely known each other half a day, and she gets on her tiptoes to give a stooping Sam a loud smacking kiss on the cheek. Cas looks so uncertain and confused that she hugs him longest, cheek to cheek, and Sam hears her whisper something in his ear but he doesn't catch what she says. When she lets him go, Cas looks reluctant at the loss of contact, and quietly says, “Thank you.”

She smiles at him before turning to Dean. “Come here, Winchester,” she says, and rather than hugging him she drags him several steps away and pulls him down by the lapels to be at her eyeline.

Sam can't hear anything she says, nor can he make out the words in Dean's deep, stilted reply. She flings her arms around his neck and he crushes her into a big bear hug.

At last, she comes back, unlocks her car and sets one foot inside. “See you, bitches,” she says, her beaming smile masking an underlying thread of sadness, but she slams her door shut and starts her engine before she can get maudlin at saying goodbye.

After she's gone, Sam, Dean, Cas and Kevin head out of the parking garage and towards the nearest fast food chain in silence. Lunch was an adventure, but dinner is comfort. Cas might be having problems navigating the wider scope of human experience, but he can put away a cheeseburger and fries with nearly as much gusto as Dean.

“I never understood being full,” he says, around a mouthful of fries, as they cruise around looking for a likely motel. “After Famine's effect on my vessel I probably shouldn't still find red meat appetizing. The thought of eating more than perhaps two of these makes me feel quite ill. But the craving persists.” He takes a big bite.

“Dude,” says Dean. “I thought we were never speaking of that again.”

Cas gives him a pissy look. “When I ate, before, I simply transubstantiated the atoms into celestial energy. Disgestive organs had no part in the process. It was no different from how I processed any other kind of energy, heat, radiation, kinetic, solar.” He gives a one-shouldered shrug, keeps chewing.

“Wait,” Sam says after a beat of thought, “you could _photosynthesize?_ And don't talk with your mouth full, you're learning bad habits from Dean.”

“Hey,” Dean says with his mouth full.

“Of course not,” Cas says primly. “I didn't convert sunlight to simple sugars. Why would I?”

“What is grace, really, some kind of energy-adapting battery?”

“Just because I could adapt any energy didn't mean I needed to,” Cas says, brow furrowing deeply. He twists in his seat to look back at Sam. “I was perfectly self-sufficient. An angel's grace is a tendril of our father's consciousness and intent. We don't need mere material particles like, like base elements, light waves -”

“Okay, get those panties untwisted,” Dean says. “Sam, stop baiting Cas with theology.”

“Sorry,” Sam mutters into his soda.

“Hey,” Kevin interjects. “Motel.”

“Finally,” Dean sighs, crumpling up his sandwich paper and tossing it with unerring accuracy into the open bag between the back seats.

While Dean's at the desk paying for two doubles, Kevin sidles over to Sam behind Castiel's back. “Roommate dibs,” Kevin mutters.

Sam blinks at him, hefting Dean's bag over his shoulder along with his own. “What?”

“Sam,” Kevin says, eyeing Dean and Cas from a distance, “I can't take it anymore. I can't sleep in the same room with either of them having wet dreams about the other one. For the love of all that's holy, man, lock them in the dungeon when we get back.”

Sam chokes his laugh into his fist, tries to turn it into an innocuous cough when Dean half-turns to give them the hairy eyeball. Cas looks bemused as always.

When Dean turns from the counter, envelope of keycards in hand, Sam quickly says, “Listen, uh, Kev and I were gonna stay up for a while, compare some translation notes, so we'll take one.”

Dean blinks at Sam, looking steamrolled. “What?”

“Bunk with Cas,” Sam says with a shrug, grabbing the envelope out of Dean's hand and fishing out two cards that have a matching number. He shoves the remaining two cards back at Dean. “It'll be fine, we just don't want to keep you guys up.”

“But,” Dean tries, but Sam slings his brother's bag off his shoulder and holds it out. When Dean doesn't take it immediately, Cas reaches out for it.

Sam hands it over, claps Kevin on the shoulder, and says, “See you in the morning,” before hightailing it out of the lobby towards the elevator banks. He hands Kevin a card as they speedwalk.

“316,” Kevin says, huffing.

Sam mashes the elevator button too many times. “I love my brother,” he says, apropos of nothing. “I really do.”

“He needs to be hit with a brick,” Kevin says, rolling his eyes.

The elevator dings open just as Dean and Cas round the corner into the little hall. Dean's face indicates that his mouth has caught up with his brain and he is _not_ thrilled at being ditched.

“Night, guys,” Kevin says loudly, before Dean can say a word. Sam lets the teenager who's nearly two feet shorter than him drag him bodily into the elevator. He turns, gives Dean a grin and a thumbs-up, and the door – thank god – closes before Dean can reach it.

Sam slumps to the wall. “He's going to murder us both, you know that,” he says to Kevin.

“One night away from the eyesex,” Kevin sighs, closing his eyes. “The pining. The repression. The stench of identity crisis.”

“Ugh,” Sam says. “I was there when Dean first crushed on a boy in high school. He was so neurotic about it he slept with the entire girls' swim team. If you look up 'overcompensation' in the dictionary.”

“Brick,” Kevin says.

Sam shakes his head. “Brick.”

-

Dean mashes the call button for the elevator furiously while Cas stands there, holding Dean's bag and watching with bemusement. Dean gives up, kicks the closed elevator door once for good measure, then turns on Cas. “Son of a bitch,” he says.

Cas looks at him searchingly, eyes narrowed. “I fail to see what warrants anger.”

Dean opens his mouth, then closes it again. Opens it again, says, “Sam ditched me!” Then realizes how whiny and childish that sounded, and tries to backpedal: “I mean, I didn't – I'm used to -”

“Is sharing a room with me unacceptable?”

Dean snaps his mouth shut. Part of him wants to scream _yes!_ A much bigger part of him is _totally_ fine with this development.

“No,” he says, calming down, and gives Cas a ghost of a smile. “It's fine. I just didn't expect it.”

“Oh.” Cas' expression clears. The lines lighten in his brow. Dean's fingers itch to reach up and smooth them down the rest of the way. And brush that flyaway piece of hair down, too, and poke that one spot to see if it's a freckle or a bug bite -

“Uh.” Dean looks at the keys Sam had shoved back in his hands. “They didn't have any adjoining rooms... we're 217. Stairs?”

Cas nods and follows Dean as they hit the stairwell rather than wait for the wayward elevator to come back down. It's only one floor. Dean doesn't realize until they're at the door that Cas is still carrying his bag. Dean pops the door open, holds it for Cas, says, “Sorry, man, I could've gotten that.”

Cas smiles, drops the bag on one bed. The one nearest the window, where Dean prefers. Does Cas know that, or was it a random guess? But – he would know it, wouldn't he? He'd popped in on Dean and Sam in enough motel rooms over the years to have picked up on the pattern.

“It isn't heavy,” Cas says, watching Dean flip the multiple locks and latches closed on the door. “It's convenient that you had it, since we didn't intend to stay overnight.”

“Yeah, well.” Dean tries to shrug off the mental awkwardness of the situation: him, Cas, bedroom, alone, needing to get ready to sleep which involves changing and... he walks past Cas towards the bathroom, shoving his mess of a brain off into a corner and trying to focus on only what's in front of him. Face value, straightforward. Be like Cas. Yeah, that's for the best: pretend he doesn't even comprehend what double meanings could be read into their circumstances. “Me 'n Sam keep go bags in the trunk all the time. Should probably pack you one, too, if you wanna go out on cases with us.”

He turns on the water, cups some and splashes his face. He busies himself with grabbing his bag and pulling out some toiletries. He doesn't look back to meet Cas' eyes.

For a while, he and Cas manage to coexist in peace. Cas seems to have the hang of preparing to sleep: brushing teeth, changing clothes, washing away the evidence of an active day in a little ritual that's as much about telling your brain it's time to shut down as it is about getting clean. Dean once caught Sam teaching Cas about Pavlov's dogs. It might not be the best way to go about learning how to be a mortal mammal, but hell, whatever works, works.

Dean shares his toothpaste and gives Cas his spare toothbrush (“this is yours now, I don't want it back, you don't share toothbrushes, that's gross”), and lends Cas one of the spare t-shirts he has crammed into his bag (“I do want that back”; “I have not heard of this cult, why do they deify blue molluscs?”; “Cas... never mind”).

While Cas is in the bathroom, Dean yanks back the covers on his bed, flops down and turns on the TV. It's too early for sleep yet, but he's mentally exhausted and he just wants to put on something brainless for a while until he gets groggy enough to hit the lights.

The bathroom door opens and Cas emerges dressed in... Dean's shirt... and boxer briefs... and Dean's brain short-circuits. Because of the weight Cas has lost recently, the shirt hangs extra loose on him, low enough to offer some modesty but not much. The briefs are awfully snug. Dean jerks his gaze back to the TV while Cas leans over to pull back the sheets on the other bed. He can't know what he's doing, Dean reasons with himself, while Cas seems to take a long damn time to fuss with getting the sheets just right. With his ass on display. Right at Dean's eye-level.

“Get you some pajama pants,” Dean mutters.

“I tried them,” Cas says easily. “I prefer sleeping without them. I don't like the way the fabric pulls and tangles.”

Fuck. Maybe he does know what he's doing, sticking his ass out like that. Dean bites his cheek hard to prevent another glance. Finally, Cas climbs into bed with a sigh.

Cas bought a couple of books today; he pulls one out and starts reading while Dean focuses on the TV and on telling his brain to shut up, shut up, shut up.

At length, Dean glances over. “Hey,” he says, surprised. “Vonnegut.”

“Yes,” Cas says, turning a page. “I bought it based on your recommendation.”

“I never... recommended...”

“It's your favorite,” Cas says, looking up at Dean, eyes wide.

Dean opens his mouth, then shuts it. “I could've lent you my copy,” he says finally.

Cas gives him a small smile and closes the book. He's silent for a long moment, just holding the little paperback. The TV is on some cop show; Dean's barely paying attention, can't be bothered to turn the volume up any more even though he can't hear every other word.

“Would you want me to? Hunt with you and Sam, that is.”

Dean shakes his head at the non-sequiter, but Cas frowns and Dean realizes he's shaking his head like no. Quickly he says, “Yeah, yes, Cas, I think you belong in the field. You're a fighter, you're always going to be. It doesn't matter what species you are.”

“Oh,” Cas says quietly, looking back down at his book. “So I should... pack a 'go bag'.” His voice does that thing where Dean can hear the air quotes.

“Sure,” Dean says. “You've got the clothes for it now. We'll make room in the trunk.”

There's silence for a while. Dean looks at the TV but can't focus on it.

“I won't be useful,” Cas says eventually. His voice is quiet, low. “In the field. I don't know how. I can't even eat correctly.”

Dean sits up, heart leaping. “That's not true.”

“I don't know how to fight as a human. I couldn't fight back against April.”

“She was a reaper, she was strong, she got you off-guard – lowered your defenses... you did fine against the angels who came after you.”

“They injured me as well.” Cas stares at his book, runs his thumb over the spine. “I endure but... pain as a mortal experience is so different from how I'm used to it.”

“Pain is pain, isn't it?”

“Biological pain is like... something outside yourself, crushing inward. A filter that prevents clarity of thought or action. The banishing sigils were painful, having injured wings was painful, but pain as a celestial experience is more – spiritual. A thing that emerges from within and can be contained.”

Dean thinks for a while. “Human pain can be contained,” he says finally. “Controlled. You have to learn how to deal with it, but it's possible to raise your tolerance. So you can keep your head clear and keep fighting. There's things that help with that, body chemistry, adrenaline – endorphines, epinephrin. I'm not saying it's not a bitch, but... it doesn't have to own you.”

Cas smiles sadly at his book. “Having other people helps,” he says. “Friends. To talk to. To explain why things feel the way they do.”

Dean swallows. “Yeah. Sure, man, we're always here for you.”

Cas' smile fades. After a while, he says, “That was what April was doing? Lowering my defenses?”

Dean clenches his fists. He really doesn't want to talk about April and – well, he could joke about it once, but he doesn't think he has it in him to do it again. The way he'd found Cas, tied to that chair bleeding and broken, and then the way April had talked about him with such condescention... Dean just can't reconcile that with the thought that Cas slept with that monster. That she really did convince him she was a sweet, caring person. Cas still sees her that way, obviously, and Dean just... can't.

“She was a honey trap,” Dean says.

Cas looks over at him. Dean can tell he wants to ask what a honey trap is, but – it's like Dean can see him putting two and two together, deciding that it is what it sounds like, that he doesn't want to know any more than that. Dean watches his face fall, just a minute line deepening here and there, but it makes Dean's guts turn over to see the agony in those microexpressions.

“She was so kind,” Cas says, barely above a whisper. “I was cold and hungry and hurt and I didn't... she was kind to me.”

“She didn't mean it,” Dean says, and immediately regrets it because Cas raises his knees and hugs them with one arm, puts his other hand over his face.

“I wish I could still travel through time,” Cas says to his knees, muffled. “I wish I hadn't slept with her. It was pleasant, it was so... but I can't separate the memory of her kindness from her betrayal anymore. At first I could, but.”

Dean shifts in his bed. Fuck, fuck, is Cas about to cry? He didn't mean for this conversation to get so hard. He doesn't want to have this talk. He wants to help Cas feel better, sure, but – immediately, like, right now, just. Poof. Better. And he knows that isn't how it works, it doesn't work that way for anyone on the planet. Welcome to being human. But Dean hates these conversations. And he hates the memory of April, and the idea of April, so damn much, that he doesn't think he can form a coherent response.

“You didn't know who she was,” Dean says, stilted, trying to think of what Sam might say. “And, uh, she made a connection and used it against you. It happens. It's happened to me.” Crap, he didn't mean to say that, but it is true. “You just have to know that... it wasn't you. Everything bad about that situation, it came from her. There's nothing wrong with you. There's nothing wrong with feeling a connection and acting on it. Lying about it, using it to hurt someone, that's... that's what's wrong.”

Cas doesn't move, doesn't say anything for a while. Dean gets increasingly uncomfortable. He pushes back the top blanket because it's too hot, but then his feet get cold. He feels like he should probably go give Cas some comforting touch, but that involves actually being on the same bed, and making the first move, and... Dean rubs a hand through his hair, torn. His heart is beating too fast.

What the hell are they doing? What are the words going unsaid? What the hell are they to each other?

Charlie's parting words ring in his head: “Do you love me?” she'd asked. And Dean had said, “Of course I do.” And she'd said, “Is there anyone here you don't love?” And Dean had opened his mouth, confused, and Charlie had said, “Then act like it, Winchester,” and given him a huge hug. “Days like this don't happen all the time,” she'd whispered into his ear. “Make it worth it.”

It dawns on Dean that he's been set up, and he feels very, very stupid.

Heart pounding, he says, “What happened, it doesn't make you dirty or anything. It doesn't make you unlovable.”

Cas' shoulders twitch and Dean hears a faint catch of breath. Damn it, he is crying.

Fuck it. Fuck it, fuck it, fuckfuckfuck. Dean slides to the edge of his bed, stands up, goes over to Cas' bed like a man possessed. He feels floaty, so anxious he can't even deal with it anymore and his higher brain functions have decided to just check out instead. He sits on the edge of Cas' bed, and at the feeling of the mattress dipping, Cas glances up. His eyes are slightly red but still dry.

“You still deserve to be loved,” Dean says, feeling outrageously stupid and kind of like he's on drugs.

“Dean,” Cas says, moving his hand to the top of his forehead, scrubbing angrily into too-long hair. His face twists. “I'm sorry, I can't control this – _biology,_ I don't mean to be emotional but I can't, I can't seem to -” A tear slips over his cheek unnoticed.

Dean reaches out, takes Cas' hand from his head, holds it tight and pulls Cas closer. Face to face.

The kiss is awkward and shallow and tastes of salt. Dean feels ill, or drunk, or both. Cas makes a choking noise and Dean pulls back to see he's started crying in earnest, face scrunched up, expression hurt and confused.

Dean panics. “I'm sorry,” he says, trying to pull his hand away.

Cas holds it bone-breakingly tight. “Please don't,” he chokes, and pulls Dean into a hug. Dean wraps his arms around Cas' shoulders, one hand on the back of his neck, breathes in the smell of his own t-shirt, and doesn't say anything while Cas clings tight and rides it out.

It only takes a couple of minutes for Cas' breathing to slow and even out, but it feels like so much longer. 'Freakout' doesn't do justice to what's going on inside Dean's head. He just kissed Castiel. He just fucking kissed his male-bodied friend who until recently wasn't even human. He kissed Cas while the man was crying about his one and only horrendous sexual encounter, which had ended in betrayal and torture and nearly death. Dean was a _terrible human being._

What was worse, he'd do it again. His entire skin buzzes with uncertainty about what's supposed to happen the second Cas lets go of him and they have to look each other in the eye. Dean can't pretend it didn't happen - five years ago, maybe even a year ago, he'd have had the energy to put his whole body and soul into the act of denial. He isn't sure when he lost that energy; maybe it's part of getting old or maybe he's just tired, so damn tired of lying and burying and avoiding. It's too draining to deal with all of that on top of everything else they have to go through on a daily basis. The world has ended too damn many times for Dean to give a flying fuck anymore about what other people think of him.

But he shouldn't have kissed Cas, not now. Not now. ( _If not now, when?_ Part of Dean's brain is a traitor. It's the part that sounds like Sam.) Dean presses his nose into Cas' shoulder and hopes he never lets go.

Cas lets go. He leans back, extracting his arms from Dean's, who jerks back as if electrocuted. Cas rubs his hands hard over his face, scrubbing off evidence.

"I'm sorry," Cas says hoarsely.

"Why?" says Dean, more than a little hysterical; "don't, you shouldn't be."

"Crying is disgusting," Cas says. He presses thumbs hard into his eyes. "And apparently involuntary." He heaves in a wet-sounding sniff.

Dean can't help laughing. He reaches over to the table between the beds for the tissues and presses a wad of them onto Cas. "Blow your nose, you sound terrible."

Cas takes the tissues, honks into them, uses another to wipe off the sweat and tears. After a moment's silence, he says, "Today Charlie informed me of a phenomenon called 'mixed signals.' She said you were the king of them."

"Uh," Dean says. "Look, man..."

"Please," Cas interrupts, holding up a hand. "I need you for once to be absolutely straightforward. The effort of interpretation is... beyond me at the moment."

He looks at Dean, eyelids red and puffy, face drawn. Dean can't look away.

"You kissed me," Cas whispers.

Dean swallows. "Yeah."

"Was it intended romantically?"

Dean can feel his face heating up, and his eyes slide from Cas' intense stare, but he makes every effort not to move. "Jesus, Cas." He clears his throat. "Yeah, I meant it."

"You apologized."

"You're traumatized, man, my timing is shit."

"Dean, I am not traumatized." Cas looks vaguely affronted. "It's my understanding that merely experiencing emotion does not qualify as trauma."

Dean laughs lightly. "Depends on the person."

Cas reaches over, takes hold of Dean's hand again. "You kissed me," he repeats, this time with something more like wonder.

"You're really stuck on that," Dean says.

"I was too miserable to pay much attention," Cas says.

"Yeah."

"Would you do it again?"

Dean puts his face in his hand, shakes his head. "Yeah," he says, knowing he's red as a beet.

"Oh." Cas sounds dazed. Dean looks back up. Cas expression is a little stunned, a little lost. But when Dean looks at him he starts to smile.

Dean decides this situation would be a lot easier to handle with less talking, so he sits forward and tugs at Cas' hand. Cas only has a heartbeat to look startled before Dean's kissing him again, same as before – closed lips and not much pressure, but this time Cas doesn't jerk away and Dean lingers. Cas' hands move up to Dean's shoulders; one brushes up his neck into his hair. Dean moves his mouth; Cas gasps slightly and presses forward, finally crashing into Dean with the force of years of sublimated attraction.

It becomes overwhelming. Cas tastes like Dean's toothpaste and smells like his laundry, but under that Cas is still himself – there's something sweet on his breath and his lips are tear-salty. He has stubble, and yeah, Dean's kissed dudes before, but it's been a hell of a long time. He'd told himself he'd grown out of it when in reality he'd just grown into a comfortable routine that didn't include that sense of daring he'd had when he was a teenager. Hell, since Lisa, there hasn't even been anyone. Not anyone who mattered or left an impression, anyway. He hasn't wanted a kiss this much in... in... he can't even think.

And the want, the _want._ He definitely hasn't been this turned on by just a kiss since he was a teenager. He digs his fingers into Cas' arms, scoots up further onto the bed for more contact, slides a hand onto Cas' waist. He feels solid, warm, planes of muscle under the thin t-shirt jumping under Dean's touch, and Dean tugs the shirt up to put his hand on Cas' belly and Cas moans. He tugs lightly at Dean's hair, opening his mouth and swiping Dean's parted lips with his tongue until Dean gasps and pushes and gravity takes hold and they fall, tangled up in each other, flat to the mattress.

The bounce of soft impact breaks the kiss, and Dean blinks back to himself, heart racing. Cas' half-lidded eyes shoot wide open again when they separate, and he meets Dean's gaze. All Dean can see there is total shellshock. Still, his pupils are blown wide, and the visual of his spit-slick lips shoots straight to Dean's groin.

“This is, uh,” Dean says hoarsely. “This is happening.”

Cas makes a little noise, grasping the back of Dean's head. “I want it,” he says quietly, “I've always wanted it, I've loved you for so long, I didn't know, I'm sorry.”

“Cas,” Dean says, half talking over Cas's mumbles, taking his hand from the other man's waist to brush it over his forehead. “Stop, it's okay, stop, I'm sorry too.”

They both ramble into silence, still staring.

“I'm sorry,” Dean finally says, “about your grace, about all this. Being human.”

“It's not so bad,” Cas says, looking watery again.

“Oh, no,” Dean says, breaking into an involuntary grin. “Stop that, come on.”

“Sexual attraction is a very difficult thing to process when you've never experienced it before.”

Dean laughs quietly. “I bet.”

“I've loved you for so long, Dean.”

Dean leans his forehead down against Cas'. “You just didn't want to jump me until you got de-mojo'd.”

Cas considers briefly. “No, it's... more than that. Grace... mutes the vessel. A buffer. But it was there. I would've jumped you anytime, if you'd wanted.”

Dean laughs again, more normally. “Trust me,” he says, “I don't think I would've taken it well.”

“I know,” Cas murmurs. “I know everything, Dean, I know your mind, I reconstructed it. I would never compromise it. I would never impose. I would never...”

Dean shakes his head to silence him. “Can we just,” he says, stilted, “stop this, now, can we do the talking later.”

“You want to kiss more.”

“I want a hell of a lot more.”

Cas sucks in a breath. “Yes,” he says.

There's no more talking.

-

Kevin kicks Sam's shin under the table for the third time. "Ow!" Sam hisses. He kicks back. "Quit it!"

"Playing footsie over there?" Dean asks around a mouthful of waffles.

"You're one to-"

Sam kicks Kevin again, harder. Kevin yelps.

"No idea what you're talking about," Dean says breezily, sipping his coffee.

Sam glares at him. Cas hasn't said a word all morning but he's been smiling like he went and did all the happy drugs at a dentist's office. He stirs another packet of sugar into his crappy diner coffee and keeps on grinning. Next to him, Dean stuffs his face, looking so forced-casual Sam wants to kick his dopey, transparent ass up and down the street.

Kevin's been obvious as hell, too, but Sam will not stand for being kicked or elbow-jabbed one more time. He's not a fucking idiot.

"So," Sam says, matching Dean's breeziness. "Where to first?"

"Satan," Dean says immediately.

The pleased look slides off Cas' face. "Excuse me?"

Sam snorts. "Wallyworld, Cas."

"It's hell," Kevin says sadly.

"I'm not arguing," says Dean, "and I've been to hell. But Cas needs a go bag, so we need the bag and all the... go." He shrugs.

Sam mirrors him, playing the passive-aggressive card. Cas looks confused; Kevin looks ready to murder anyone and everyone by the name of Winchester.

In Walmart, Sam leads the way to the sporting goods first. "Duffel," he says. "Not conspicuous. Sorry, but locals are gonna remember an FBI guy carrying an eyesore like that."

Cas' eye was lingering on a bright blue bag with neon green stripes, but he passes it over sadly for a black bag that looks just like Dean's but less travel worn.

"It didn't make my eyes sore," Cas mutters to Dean, placing his new bag in the shopping cart.

"It's a saying," Dean says fondly, giving Cas a little grin.

Behind him, Sam hears Kevin gag.

Cas predictably takes about a year in the health and body aisle, reading all the bottles, popping every cap and sniffing all the soaps and shampoos. "How am I supposed to know what skin type I have?" he asks idly, distracted by a label.

"No one does," Dean complains, "it's all bullshit to make you buy more stuff."

"Look at you, anti-capitalist all of a sudden," Sam says.

Dean scoffs. "It's true. Come on, Cas, they're all just soap. Soap is soap, pick a smell you like."

Eventually Cas returns to the cart with a small pile of bottles, smiling.

Dean stares for a second. "Dude, that is all chick soap."

"Soap is soap," Cas says primly, dumping his armload. "I like the smells." And he sticks his hands in his pockets and walks off again to decipher razors.

Dean shakes his head. Sam picks up a bottle, leans close to his brother and whispers, "His hair is going to smell like lilac blossoms and springtime essence."

"Shut up," Dean says, voice half an octave too high, and he stomps off before Sam can see his face turning completely red.

"They've got to be shitting us if they think they're fooling anyone," Kevin hisses, grabbing his own bottles of hair product.

"Haha," Sam says flatly. "Oh, they're not. Two can play at this game." He pulls out his phone. "Or five." He sets the camera, raises the phone, and snaps a picture of Dean leaning close to Cas' shoulder to look at a pack of razors (and presumably try to talk Cas out of getting the pink one with swirling flower petals on the packaging). Dean's hand is lightly touching Cas' lower back.

Sam texts the picture to Charlie with one word: _score._

-

Half an hour later, they're getting ready to check out when Sam's phone starts going off like a broken alarm clock. It's Charlie - and Charlie and more Charlie.

_WAIT WHO SCORED_  
DID DEAN SCORE W CAS  
SRY I WAS RAIDING  
CITATION NEEDED MAN  
IM TXTING HIM 

_wait no,_ Sam sends back quickly. _Let it happen. They think they're being sneaky and I'm documenting it_

 _Yes but define score,_ Charlie says. _Did the nasty indeed occur_

 _Don't know,_ Sam says with a grimace. _Don't want to know._

_I DO_

Sam rolls his eyes. _Look I'm just apprising you of developments in the case and the development is that they're being way more disgusting than usual and cagey abt it_

_Omg they banged_

Sam turns his choke into a cough and gives Dean a thumbs up when he turns back to check on Sam's well-being.

_I knew the makeover plan would work_  
I should write for Hollywood  
I totally pretty womaned them 

_Cas isn't a hooker and I don't like any scenario where deans being compared to richard gere,_ Sam types hurriedly.

 _Aw,_ says Charlie. _Lemme know what happens I can't stay afk any longer or my tank will have a coronary._

"Having a meaningful conversation there, Sammy?" Dean grouses, starting to load bags into the cart again. "Or you feel like helping?"

Sam makes a face at Dean and grabs some bags.

-

Exhausted and ready to go home, Sam drags them to one last stop. "Groceries," he says.

"Come on," Dean whines. "Lebanon has groceries."

"I want to find some masa flour and yeast starter."

"What?" Dean complains.

Cas leans forward with interest. He's been relegated to the backseat again. "Are you going to bake?"

Sam shrugs. "Gonna experiment, but yeah. Maybe we can make some kind of bread that lives up to poetry."

This time, it's Dean who gags. "Last stop," Dean yells as they pile out of the car.

"I promise," says Sam. “Cross my heart.”

"Pickles!" says Kevin, running ahead.

Dean shakes his head.

Sam takes incriminating pictures while they shop and sends them all to Charlie. Mostly gratuitous touching: Dean's hand on Cas' back and arm and shoulder, Cas walking about half an inch from Dean at all times. The best one is Cas brushing his thumb over Dean's cheek – Dean had been picking up packs of flour and one had a hole, got white all over his hands and puffed into his face.

 _Omg,_ Charlie sends after that one. _I'm having that framed and mailing it to the bunker._

 _Do it,_ Sam says with a grin.

Sam tells Cas to pick up anything he wants, things he knows he likes or things he'd like to try, but it's Kevin who ends up collecting the bulk of the junk. In the international section he grabs an enormous armload of shrimp chips, four boxes of dashi powder, and Sam has to talk him down from picking up every pack of rice noodles the store has. “I am going to have some goddamn real, civilized noodles,” Kevin snaps, dumping bottles of fish sauce and rice vinegar into the cart. “Ramen, pho, curry, fuck it. I am so sick of chicken flavor packets.” Into the cart go three different kinds of chili paste and a bottle of soy sauce the size of Kevin's head.

“Hey,” says Dean. “The trunk's big but it's not bottomless, slow down.”

Sam has to steer both Kevin and Cas away from the refrigerated section. “It's a long drive home and we don't have a cooler.”

“But tofu,” Kevin complains.

“Why are there are so many kinds of cheese,” Cas says, looking perplexed.

Out in the parking lot once more, the moment the Impala comes into view, Kevin all but shouts “Shotgun!”

“Damn it, Kev,” says Dean.

Cas murmurs to Sam, “I thought we weren't supposed to talk about the fact that the car is full of guns.”

Sam barks out a loud laugh and slaps a hand over his mouth because a passing granny gives him a perturbed look.

Bags upon bags upon bags finally crammed into the trunk, Kevin luxuriating in all the leg room of the front seat, Dean collapses behind the wheel with a huge groan. “I'm so fucking done with all of you,” he says, turning the key. “Can't take you _anywhere.”_

“I'm hungry,” says Kevin. “What's lunch?”

“And what exactly _is_ a corndog?” asks Cas. Where he even picked up the word, Sam has no idea.

It's going to be a long drive back to Lebanon.

-

Dean _almost_ makes it home without needing a pit stop, but he knows it'll be another twenty minutes of backroads out from Lebanon before they actually hit the bunker, so one more gas station it is. Kevin is dozing with his earbuds in and Sam seems uninterested in shifting from his intense staring contest with his phone, so Dean reaches around to poke Cas in the knee. “Need to stretch your legs?”

Cas unfolds from the car with a groan Dean tries very hard not to find sexy (he fails). While Cas paces around the car, regaining feeling in his butt, Dean goes inside to hit the head and buy coffee. It's half past six and he's so sleepy he's almost tempted by an energy shot instead, but he decides he'll be home and in his own bed before too long.

Even after a year of having the place, the words _home_ and _his own bed_ still send shivers down his spine. These days he can look forward to crashing: to memory foam and 500 count sheets and blankets without any questionable stains except ones Dean makes himself (because among other things, hey, Sam isn't in the same room to yell at him not to eat in bed). He can sleep deep and uninterrupted, never woken by Sam's snores or the long wail of a train or a cacophany of sirens on a highway right outside the window. After a few months, he's even stopped sleeping with a knife under his pillow. He can _rest._

Coffee in hand, Dean steps out the door to find Cas and ask him if he wants anything.

He can't see Cas anywhere. He squints, looks back into the store to see if he missed something, but no: the place is tiny, he can see at a glance that there's no one there but a couple of truckers and the girl at the checkout. He walks around the side of the building to glance down the sidewalk and finally spots the wayward ex-angel standing in knee-high grass a few yards out into the scrubby field next to the parking lot, looking up at the sky.

“Hey,” Dean calls. “That's a good way to pick up ticks.”

Cas looks back, brow furrowed.

Dean jerks his head towards the car. “Come on, we're almost home. You can go hiking in the woods by the bunker.”

Cas turns, makes his way back. He leaves bent stalks of grass behind him. He brushes his hand over the tops of the grass as he comes.

Dean bites the inside of his cheek hard against a swell of unwelcome emotion. He can't get this way all the time, can't be overcome with this feeling of _too much too much_ every time he watches Cas touch a plant or look at a cloud or smile. He's not a damn teenager anymore (not that he can recall ever feeling like this as a teenager) and it's just plain ridiculous.

Not that any of his self-admonition stops it from happening. His spine still warms, his guts still squirm, and as much as he rolls his eyes at himself, he can't magically stop _feeling._

To cover, he lifts his coffee cup in a little salute as Cas steps onto concrete again. “Want any jet fuel?” he asks, trying to be casual, aware that it's the first time they've been alone since this morning.

“No,” Cas says quietly. “I'm fine.”

This morning, when they'd woken up in the same bed, still dressed because after a heady half-hour makeout session they'd gone to sleep like the pathetic old men they are. But it wasn't pathetic, really, it was unspoken choice. Dean hadn't wanted to go further, not then, not with April fresh on both their minds and Cas so new, all his experiences still so raw and unfiltered, and Dean nothing but a bundle of nerves and neuroses barely holding himself together. Cas' hands on Dean's face and his chapped lips and his body heat were all Dean had wanted, just to curl up with those things and this man and feel like he had just answered some cosmic question that had been hanging over him for half his life.

They'd gone to sleep content and calm, woken up the same, showered and dressed and gone to breakfast without saying much. With a grin, Dean had told Cas they should let Sam suffer by not telling him what had changed. Cas had been too happy to do anything but agree.

Now, Cas scuffs his foot over the concrete and says, “I want to tell Sam. This feels disingenuous.”

Dean rolls his eyes. “He knows,” he says. “He's trying to play matchmaker the whole secret-spy way, but he's terrible. Trust me.”

“Still,” Cas mumbles.

“We'll tell him,” Dean says. “When we get home. It'll be fine.”

“All right.”

Dean hesitates, then takes the last step into Cas' personal space and presses a swift kiss to his mouth. It hits the corner of his lips, but Cas follows his movement, cups Dean's jaw and returns the kiss firmly. Dean gives it a lingering moment, then pulls back.

“The sooner we get home...” he says.

Cas immediately brushes past Dean, back to the car.

-

Sam slumps low into his seat, stares at the picture he just took. He'd deleted all the others as soon as he'd sent them off to Charlie, but this one he hesitates over.

He'll leave it. Just for now.

Doors creak open and Dean throws himself into the drivers' seat again. Cas slides in next to Sam, his expression somewhere far, far away.

The image he just texted Charlie pops up with the tiny word “read” and a timestamp.

Sam has turned off his text alerts and his ringtones because of exactly what happens next. His phone all but explodes in his hand, but at least it does so silently. Sam calmly types out that Charlie shouldn't call just yet, that he'll let her know when they've gotten back to the bunker and settled in, and that he's done with the creepy stalker pics now so would she please stop using the demand “pics or it didn't happen.” Something has clearly happened. Even if it's just a sidewalk kiss outside a gas station in the middle of Bumfuck Nowhere, Kansas, something is clearly in the process of happening.

He feels like he needs to hold his breath or he'll interrupt it. He's been watching Castiel and Dean stare each other down for almost six years, an entire range of bullshittery from shuttered glances to open longing to soppy adoration to teenage crush. But for all that Dean comes across as a freewheeler, he is actually intensely good at staying on task, and there hasn't been a spare moment to unwind – or to unpack his emotional baggage – since more or less the second Castiel walked into their lives.

Sometimes Sam wonders what that year in Purgatory was really like. Not the monsters and the fear and the death, because he got a taste of that when he passed through the place himself, but what it was like for Dean and Cas to just _exist_ in one place for so long. Cas unable to flap away the second he got uncomfortable, Dean unable to brush Cas off in favor of the next case. Neither of them ever talk about it. Sam thinks that Purgatory is probably where they really began to change. If Naomi hadn't gotten in the way – screwed Cas up for so long – Sam imagines that some kind of emotional tipping point might have been reached a lot earlier.

But he'll take the win with the fact that it's been reached at all. He casually types to Charlie, watches the back of Dean's head bob slightly to the quiet music from the radio, glances over at Cas leaning against the window with closed eyes and a faint smile.

He shuts his eyes and prays that it works out.

-

 _Ok,_ Sam types, _we've got the groceries in and Dean looks ready to collapse. Ambush green light._

Within a minute, Dean's phone starts to ring. Dean answers and doesn't have a chance to form half a word of greeting before everyone in the near vicinity hears Charlie yell “DEAN WINCHESTER!”

Kevin's eyebrows go up; he grabs the last few bags of his clothes and other purchases out of the trunk and scurries off into the bunker to hide from any further drama. Sam snatches up the last few bags of odds and ends, slams the trunk shut, and prods Cas in the arm. Cas is looking over at Dean, startled and torn.

“Come on,” Sam urges. “Let 'em hash it out.”

“I don't understand,” Cas says despairingly, but Sam takes his elbow and pulls him down the steps, through the bunker door and into relative peace.

They walk down the length of the library. “Sam,” Cas starts as they reach the kitchen door. “There's something...”

"Hey," Sam interrupts. "I know. I get it. You have my blessing and all that junk."

Cas frowns at him. "I haven't even said what..."

Sam turns to face him, puts a hand on his shoulder. "You are hopelessly in love with my brother. Have been for years. You want to know if I'm okay with you two finally getting over your UST? The answer is dear god, yes, for the love of all that's holy, please have sex with Dean. Just do not let me hear it, or... know anything about it, ever."

Cas opens his mouth. Closes it again. "Oh," he says. Then, quietly, "Thank you, Sam." Suddenly Sam has an armful of huggy angel, so he tries to pat Cas' back and make supportive noises while his hands are still loaded down with groceries.

"Okay, need to breathe," he says at length. Cas lets go, looking sheepish.

"Um," says Cas. "Regarding... intimacy, can you expl-"

"No," says Sam loudly, pushing by Cas into the kitchen. "Nope, no no no, you're having all your birds and bees talks with Dean, I want no part of this."

"I've attempted to discuss bees with Dean before, he seems less than interested."

"Oh, for f..." Sam sighs. "Sex, it means the sex talk.” A terrible thought occurs to him. “Um, please tell me you do actually know what Dean meant before, when he asked if you used protection?"

"I..." Cas looks alarmed.

Through gritted teeth, Sam says, "Do you know. what a condom is." He stolidly puts cans away in cabinets.

Cas perks up. "Yes, that. Is that what he meant? Yes, April insisted."

Sam lets out a relieved breath. "Good," he says. "Great. So she was a complete monster but at least she was into being safe."

"Safe from what?"

Sam leans his head against a cabinet door. "You know what," he says, "I'm going to break one of my cardinal rules and tell you to just Google it."

-

The sky is orange and the shadows long by the time Dean gets off the phone with Charlie and stands up from the hood of the Impala. He stretches, rubs his eyes. He has quite the headache blooming now, and his back is stiff. The temperature is gliding down from cool to chilly.

He slides into the car, fires her up to pull her around from the door into the garage for the night. Inside, he checks her over thoroughly – cleaning out the detritus of two days of travel, making sure the arsenal in the trunk is neat and orderly again. As a last passing thought he pulls out his go bag. The clothes in it need to be washed and the whole thing needs to be re-packed anyway.

At long last he heads inside. He feels wrung out. He loves Charlie like a sister but she demands that Dean do a lot of self-examination he would otherwise avoid. But she has a way of keeping him talking long past the point when he wants to give up and shut down, of digging and digging until she forces him to turn over something really nasty and deal with it. And his head might be pounding, he might be achy all over, his mouth might be dry and his throat sore, but damn if he doesn't feel better anyway.

He might not even murder Sam, not just yet. Charlie had showed him the picture from the gas station that Sam had sent to her, and Dean's already plotting his vengeance. It'll involve hidden cameras, he thinks, and embarrassing pictures of of Sam in moments when he thought he was alone and unobserved being taped up all over the hallways of the bunker.

He steps into the laundry room long enough to pull out the wad of dirty clothes from his bag and throw them in the big pile Sam keeps swearing he's going to do "tomorrow".

The corridors are empty. The bunker is silent. It's more peaceful than unnerving. Dean knows Kevin is probably buried under headphones, and Sam is just avoiding Dean. Which is fine. Cas, though, he isn't sure. He peeks inside his own room – but no, it's empty. He tosses down his go bag by the door, then heads off again down the hall.

Cas has claimed the room closest to the library. Because of a way the library wall angles, it's the smallest bedroom on the hall. Dean and Sam had, of course, grabbed big open spaces for themselves when given the chance, and Kevin had taken the one buried furthest underground, furthest from the entrance, where he could be the most alone.

Cas took the room closest to the books and to the exit, neither of which surprise Dean. The bunker has no windows, which can sometimes be a real mindfuck, so Cas goes outside as much as humanly possible. Dean gets it. He isn't much of a fan of being underground himself, having been buried more times than anyone should ever have to be. Cas used to be all energy and air and whatever his wings were made of. Being underground is anathema to him.

But being right next to the library is the pro to outweigh all the cons. Since the first moment a graceless, newly-human Cas set foot in the bunker, he's done little else but read like his life depends on it. Maybe it does: he's read all the works they have in Enochian and moved on to every other dead language he can find, obviously hunting for information about grace and spells and the Great Levers, as Metatron called them. Dean and Sam have left him to it, not wanting to pressure him or interrupt whatever coping mechanisms he needs to use to deal with all the shit he's been through.

Dean reaches the door to Cas' room, knocks lightly. The door creaks open an inch under his touch. Dean pushes it with a fingertip, barely wide enough to see in.

“Cas?” he asks quietly.

“Hm,” says Castiel, and Dean pushes the door further open until he can see the bed. Cas is sitting on it, leaned back against his pillows, Sam's laptop open on his knees. “Come in,” Cas says, glancing up and giving Dean a hint of a smile.

Dean hesitantly steps through the door and pushes it shut behind him with a faint click.

“I told Sam,” Cas says. “Or rather, he told me he knew. And then I tried to ask him a question and he said to Google it.”

Dean breaks into a wide grin. “Cas. Please tell me you're using Sam's laptop to watch gay porn.”

Cas' brow furrows. “Do you want me to say that or do you want to know if that's what I'm doing?”

“I am saying,” Dean says, striding over to the bed, “that you should definitely use Sam's laptop to watch gay porn. And bookmark it all. And click on some ads. Save a bunch of pictures to the desktop.”

Cas gives him a wary look, but he does shift to the side so that Dean can sit on the mattress next to him. “I believe you're being facetious,” Cas says.

“No. Me?” Dean leans over to look at what Cas is reading. It's a wiki page... called 'embryonic and prenatal development of the male reproductive systems in humans'. “Wow,” Dean deadpans. “Sexy.”

Cas gives him a serious look. “I began by typing in 'sex' but the results were less than informative.”

Dean snorts. “Cas. Sex is not hard. You don't have to start from complete scratch.” He gestures at the screen.

“It's fascinating, though,” Cas says, going back to reading.

After a moment, Dean says, “Are you seriously going to sit there and read that whole thing? Should I go?”

A smile flickers around the corners of Cas' mouth; his eyes crinkle up, but he doesn't look over.

“You shit,” Dean says. He reaches over to snap the laptop shut and pushes it off Cas' knees.

“I was reading that,” Cas complains, but his smile is wide now.

“Learn by doing,” Dean says, turning to face Cas better, putting his arm around Cas' shoulder and the back of his neck, and leaning in close.

But it's Cas who kisses Dean, skipping sweet and diving headlong into intensity. He presses right up against him without hesitation or shame, opening his mouth against Dean's, pushing up to one knee and turning to face him. Dean automatically spreads his legs so Cas can settle astride his thigh, knee close to Dean's crotch, hands hooked around the back of Dean's neck.

Dean brushes his palm over Cas' two-day stubble and runs his fingers behind Cas' ear, into short, fine hair. Cas makes an approving noise, licking Dean's bottom lip and into his mouth, sighing. He has decent technique for someone who's almost never done this. Clearly he remembers the pizza man.

In some ways it's no different from any other partner Dean's ever made out with. Familiar warm weight, trailing hands, hot slick slide of tongue and lips and someone else's warm breath in his mouth and on his jaw. But that's where the familiar territory ends, because the last time he kissed someone and _meant_ it this much was Lisa, but he's never kissed a man like this. In fact, of the handful of men he slept with back in the day, he only kissed a couple of them at all. He'd been afraid, on top of other things. He hadn't loved them, no more than he's loved the vast majority of women he's slept with. He's pretty sure Sam knew – unless that was just Dean's paranoia reading some kinda underlying knowing into Sam's usual bitchface – back when Dean would stumble into their motel rooms at two and three in the morning, always drunk, sometimes high, sometimes with a limp.

Besides his stint of fooling around, he'd also made a few bucks giving blowjobs in truck stops for a few months just before Sam went off to California. He'd never thought of it as prostitution, just monetizing something he'd probably be doing anyway. Like hustling pool or running scams.

He realizes he's zoned out when Cas stops kissing his neck and leans his forehead against Dean's. "I can't hear your thoughts anymore," Cas murmurs.

Dean runs his hands up Cas' sides under his shirt. It's a t-shirt, one of the new ones he bought yesterday, bright blue. He seems to be drawn to bright colors now. "Sorry," Dean says. "Old stuff. Doesn't matter."

"I'd like to know," says Cas.

Dean sighs. "It's just been a while. Long while."

Cas sits back, touches his first two fingers to Dean's forehead. As if to heal, Dean thinks, but even when he was an angel he couldn't have healed Dean of all the crap he's done in his life. Of course, when he'd been Emmanuel he'd said he could heal illness of a spiritual nature, not that he'd ever explained what he meant by that.

"I know," Cas says, and Dean meets his eyes, startled. "When I remade you I saw everything that makes you who you are. I didn't change any of it then and I would never change it. I could have the power of God and I wouldn't change you. You were never broken and you don't need to be fixed."

Dean sucks in a sharp breath.

"Hester was right about me," Cas says softly. "The first moment I saw you in hell, I was lost."

Dean can't deal with this. He pulls Cas to him, crashes lips together, tries to communicate in touch what he simply isn't ready to say out loud. Nothing that's happened before matters. Not right now.

Cas returns the enthusiasm in kind, apparently content to have Dean's full attention again. He tugs at Dean's button-down, trying to follow Dean's lead, gets his hands on skin at last and grips Dean's waist, spreading his fingers to dip under his belt.

"What do you want to do," Dean murmurs against Cas jaw.

"More of this?"

Dean laughs, turning his head down against Cas' neck. "I mean, how far do you want this to go, what do you want."

Cas tugs Dean's shirt halfway up his chest. "I want to have sex," he says firmly.

Dean snickers again, he can't help it. "Cas," he says. "Buttons. And that covers a lot of ground."

Cas huffs, starts undoing the buttons of Dean's overshirt. Dean is obstinately unhelpful, popping the button of Cas' jeans and moving his hands down from Cas waist to his hips and the top of his ass. Cas fumbles in his haste, expression intensely focused. "It seems straightforward enough," Cas says grumpily, getting the last button undone and ungracefully yanking the shirt off, forcing Dean's hands off his hips in the process. He strips off the black t-shirt under the button down, throws it to the side.

"Okay, cowboy," Dean laughs. "I guess I'm not asking 'your place or mine.'” He's glad he closed the door.

Cas unzips his pants, takes Dean's hands and places them back on his waist, pushing down in clear request for Dean to keep going.

"Bossy," Dean says, but obeys by sliding his hands down inside Cas' underwear, over the swell of his ass, cupping and kneading.

Cas makes a pleased sound, puts his hands on Dean's bare shoulders and runs them down to his chest. He rocks his hips slightly and Dean obliges by raising the thigh he's straddling, giving him something more to rub against. Cas buries his face in Dean's neck and rocks again.

"See?" Cas says breathlessly. "Straightforward. Kiss, touch, orgasm. I told you, I observed humanity for eons. Sex is very repetitive."

"Wow, you're really selling me on it," Dean says coolly, rolling his eyes. "You know it's more than that or you wouldn't want to do it."

"I did notice," Cas says, now full-on rutting against Dean's leg, “that the act seems much... grander from an inside perspective. And it seems to me that the experience would be better with someone I trust. Who won't try to kill me in the morning."

Dean heaves up, grabs Cas under the thighs and turns him over, Dean rolling on top of him. Dean kisses him soundly. "It is better," he says, low, "and don't talk about her. I'm gonna make you forget she ever happened. This is the first time you deserve."

"Dean," Cas breathes against his lips.

"I'm gonna take care of you," Dean says, eyes slipping mostly closed as he works his way down Cas' jaw. "Don't think about what you've done before.” He strips off Cas' bright blue shirt, tugs until he raises his hips so Dean can push his jeans down. “Don't think about what sex looks like from the weirdo heaven-voyeur angle. Just...” He swipes his tongue over a nipple. “Feel it.”

Cas shudders soundlessly under him, breath coming more shallowly as Dean drags teeth over the hardening nub. He sucks lightly, licks, moves to the other side, pushes his hand down the back of Cas' underwear again. Damn briefs, hugging his ass, making Dean want to – to do things he can do, now, and absolutely will, every single one of them.

Dean sucks a point on Cas' chest hard enough that it'll definitely leave a hickey and Cas finally gasps aloud, squirming under Dean's touch. Dean sits up, undoes his own jeans and pushes them down, rolling off his knees long enough to kick them off. He tosses Cas' off the bed, too, and has the rational brain power left to pick up Sam's computer and move it to the floor before rolling back on top of Cas, one knee between Cas' spread legs in a mirror of their earlier position.

If Dean thought it would feel weird, being with a dude again, he was wrong. When he looks Cas over, he doesn't register male first, just _Cas_ – messy hair and runner's thighs and muscles more compact than Dean's, a faint dusting of hair in the center of his chest, thinner than he ought to be from his recent poor eating habits, thin enough that his hipbones are sharp and begging to be bitten. Above one hip, in the dip at the edge of the soft plane of his stomach, is the slapdash protection tattoo he'd begged a needle jockey to give him a discount on, because he'd only had a crumpled ball of tens and a twenty on him (kindness of strangers) and he must have looked so desperate and been so persuasive that it worked. Dean had advised him on how to take care of the thing, since it had barely begun to heal when Cas had finally made it to the bunker, but Dean hasn't seen it since. It's healed cleanly. It may have been a quick job but the artist's hands had been steady, her script impeccable. It was a warding, it worked, what else could you ask for?

Dean touches the tattoo, traces over the words he can't read but he knows what they mean like he was born saying them. He once had them carved into his ribs, right over his heart. He bends down and kisses the tattoo, licks and ghosts his teeth over the hipbone that demands it. Cas moves under him, sharp breaths and happy sounds. Cas pushes Dean's underwear down, over his thighs, and Dean moves unthinking to slip one knee through for ease of movement, and then Cas is holding his dick and Dean didn't even realize how hard he already was, how greedy for touch. He sits back, pushes Cas' briefs down and strips them both and tosses the clothes away.

Like riding a bike? Maybe. Dean chews his lip and feels strange about not finding it strange at all. He settles over Cas to kiss again, palms Cas' hardness and grips tight and strokes like he would himself, so that Cas half-moans, half-whimpers into his mouth and fails to kiss Dean back because he's too overwhelmed by feeling.

“'Sgood?” Dean murmurs out of habit, always having been one for checking in often.

“Dean,” Cas whines.

“Not gonna take much, is it,” Dean says, nipping under Cas' jaw and lining up their hips and grinding to rub their lengths together. He's teasing Cas but it's not far off from true for himself, either. Dean's heart is hammering, the pleasure of stimulation almost secondary to the fact of who.

“Nn,” Cas grinds out, working his hand between them to hold their cocks together.

Dean sighs, pulls Cas' hand out and up to his mouth, sucks three fingers in. Cas meets his eyes again, stares. Dean licks up his palm slowly, wet as he can, eyes on Cas. Then he moves Cas' hand back to where it was and rolls his hips, encouraging.

Cas gets it, takes hold of them again, and the wet slide is so much better. “Little tighter,” Dean murmurs into Cas' ear. Cas obliges, and Dean sets up a shallow thrusting rhythm.  
Cas doesn't do much to help after that, just holds on and loses control of his breathing, of his hips, of the pulse fluttering fast under the skin of his neck. Dean opens his mouth against Cas' shoulder and rocks, moves one hand down to join Cas' and direct his touch a little better, until the slide is _perfect_ and the momentary catch against Cas' frenulum every couple of thrusts makes Dean's spine turn to jelly and he moves his hand down to roll Cas' balls around once, tugs gently, and Cas' breath gusts scalding over his ear and neck with something that might have been a cry if he weren't too overcome to properly make a sound.

The lean body under him bows up slightly and Cas doesn't need to say “Dean, please,” because Dean's already jacking him in earnest again, talking into the skin of his shoulder: “yeah, angel, yeah, come on, it's right there, right there.”

Dean moves his head back in time to see the ridiculous way Cas' face scrunches when he comes, the first spurt followed by a helpless cry and muscles spasming over his stomach, which Dean can feel against the back of his knuckles where he's still stroking quick little twists around the head of Cas' cock. The dizzy high of vicarious pleasure sends a lightning bolt of heat down Dean's spine and into his belly and his own orgasm sparks up, starts to build. When Cas regains enough sense to change his grip to Dean's dick alone and match Dean's movements, that's it. Dean spills with a rough gasp, toes curling, skin electric. Cas pulls his face down and kisses him through it.

Cas gulps deep breaths, easing into relaxation. Dean slumps a little to the side, trying not to crush Cas but unwilling to roll over. Cas turns to him, pushes at him, until they're side-by-side and smearing come between them and it's probably getting on the sheets, too, and won't that be a joy for Sam to discover when he finally does the laundry. Dean can't help but laugh.

Cas grins back, eyes crinkling. “I didn't know it would be like this,” he says.

“What, sex?”

“Telling you I love you,” Cas says simply. “Knowing that you know.”

Dean closes his eyes, shakes his head as best he can against the pillow. “Okay, Hallmark.” He palms over Cas' hip, brushing his tumb over the tender skin of his warding tattoo. His smile falters. “You know,” he says, low, “when I said – when I told you I needed you, that we were family... there were things I meant, things I didn't... I don't...” He isn't even sure what he's trying to say.

“Dean,” Cas murmurs, pulling his face down and kissing his forehead. Dean stops trying to articulate anything, just breathes in silence and the smell of warm skin and sweat and – smoke? Cas must have used some of that dumb hand lotion earlier. Dean bites hard on his cheek, not knowing if it makes him want to laugh or cry.

Dean puts his face in the hollow of Cas' throat and silently mouths the words he can't say. He puts his hand on Cas' chest. Cas puts his hand on Dean's shoulder, lining up fingers with a scar that hasn't been there for years.

Both of them are too dozy to move. At great length Dean rouses himself enough to reach off the bed and grab the first thing he can find to wipe their stomachs clean, his t-shirt. The come is already half-dry and trying to flake. Dean doesn't even care, gets the worst of it, urges Cas to scoot over so they have equal room on the mattress, pulls up a blanket. Cas, it transpires, is a cuddler. Not a neat, compact one, either, but one of those sprawlers who wants to use another body as both blanket and pillow. Dean figures what the hell, he isn't going to argue, and lets himself get tangled up in an octopus of limbs.

Cas sighs long and sleepily against Dean's clavicle. “I usually find going to sleep to be difficult,” he mumbles.

“Mm,” Dean groans faintly. “Gettin' off beats countin' sheep any day.”

After a long silence, when Dean is almost completely asleep, Cas suddenly shifts on top of him. He pushes up to an elbow and pokes Dean in the chest. Dean cracks an eye.

_“What sheep?”_

-

Dean rouses to a knock on the door. He grumbles into the crook of his elbow, hands snug under the pillow, and doesn't move.

“Cas?” calls Sam's voice.

The mattress dips beside him and all his warmth suddenly vanishes, and he remembers abruptly where he is and why. He grins into his elbow. Padding footsteps cross the room and the door opens. Dean's pretty sure the sheet is still over him but even if it isn't he doesn't care.

“Sam,” Cas rasps.

“Jesus-! Uh. Hi yeah I need my computer back do you have it.”

Dean finally turns his head around and moves his arm enough to see the doorway. He's greeted by a lovely view of Cas' naked ass. Dean tries not to snort, almost-closes his eyes to pretend he's still asleep.

“Of course,” says Cas. He turns around, looks at Dean – narrows his eyes suspiciously – then heads over to the bed, bends down to pick up Sam's laptop. Dean hears Sam choke. He cracks his eyes a bit more to look at Sam in the doorway, red as a lobster, looking stolidly at the ceiling.

“Here you go,” Cas says, striding back with the computer. “Google was very informative.”

Sam's silence is that of pure existential horror. He looks down again to take the computer and his gaze passes into the room, settles on Dean.

Dean opens his eyes, frees one hand and flips his fingers up in a greeting. “Morning,” he says.

Sam makes a strangled noise and flees.

Cas shuts the door and returns to the bed nonchalantly. “I knew you were awake.” He slides back under the covers, scoots close to Dean and settles down, insinuating one leg over Dean's calf.

Dean yelps. “Cold feet,” he grunts in complaint.

Cas snuggles defiantly. Dean sighs. So this is how it's going to be.

After a few minutes, Dean's bladder makes itself known. So does his grumbling stomach and his craving to follow the faint coffee smell wafting in from the hall. He elbows Cas in the chest. “Hey,” he says. “Morning.”

Cas makes a stubborn noise.

“Yeah,” Dean agrees. He works his way out from under Cas' hold and turns over to drop a kiss on his head. He wrinkles his nose. “Go shower.”

Cas moans into the pillow.

Dean sighs. “Come on, man, you got that lavender soap or whatever the hell. I'll make pancakes.”

Cas doesn't make a complaining sound, which is an improvement. Finally he turns his face up. “And eggs?” he asks pathetically.

“Go shower and I will teach you how to scramble eggs,” Dean promises.

Later, just when Cas has made it out of the shower and joined Dean in the kitchen, Sam's outraged voice echoes down the corridor: _“Castiel!”_

Dean stares at Cas, eyebrows raised. Cas cracks another egg into a bowl. “I never said I didn't watch any videos before you showed up,” he says.

Dean laughs all the way through breakfast.

 

_When sweetness sings in the pasture_  
We throw ourselves on the mercy of the earth.  
If sand and salt have the answer,  
Then the act itself will be louder than the word. 

_And I'll be on your side, I'll be on your side, I'll be on your side._  
History Book, Dry the River

**Author's Note:**

> I told myself I wouldn't do the thing... but then I did the thing. The fluffy, doofy, domestic first time thing where it all ends with sex. *hides* I keep trying to write a different fic that is serious and then 40 pages of fluff happen instead? So anyway I recently rewatched the first third of season 9 and just, you know. This happened. (KEVIN IS NEVER ALLOWED TO DIE. KEVIN IS ETERNAL.)


End file.
